


the lost boys

by owlinaminor



Series: author's favorites [7]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: (updates on saturdays), Alternate Universe - Historical, Emotional Trauma, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-World War II, Shiratorizawa, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-12 18:59:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 61,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7945582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A group of boys lost everything in war only to inherit a country that no longer knows its place in the world.  How do they grow up?  Who do they look up to?  Where do they go to find purpose?  There is only one answer: they turn to each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. act one: loss

**Author's Note:**

> here it is at last: my massive hqbb shiratorizawa gen fic, released upon the world. the fic is completed and is about 60k in total, and i'll be publishing one act (there are three) each week.
> 
> i've made a playlist for this fic; it's mostly for myself to write to, but if you're interested, you can find it [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/1292460687/playlist/4CX6p3WK4tlLb1mWQVq92A). i do recommend at least listening to [the lightning strike](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NNFOcPGXX4) (by snow patrol), because i've listened to it literally hundreds of times while planning and writing this fic. (you may notice that the lightning strike has three parts! and this fic has three parts! wonder where i got that idea!)
> 
> and thanks goes to [becky](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis), my beta, who has worked tirelessly on this fic - yelling at me for dash overuse, calling out my bs metaphors, etc.
> 
> tw: events in this act allude to trauma, emotional abuse, and strong feelings of grief. there are no graphic depictions of violence, but there _are_ depictions of the emotions that result from violence. (this story is very much thematically defined by the atmosphere of post-wwii japan.)

> _…The thought of those officers and men as well as others who have fallen in the fields of battle, those who died at their posts of duty, or those who met death [otherwise] and all their bereaved families, pains our heart night and day._
> 
> _The welfare of the wounded and the war sufferers and of those who lost their homes and livelihood is the object of our profound solicitude.  The hardships and sufferings to which our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great._
> 
> _We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you, our subjects.  However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the [unavoidable] and suffering what is unsufferable.  Having been able to save *** and maintain the structure of the Imperial State, we are always with you, our good and loyal subjects, relying upon your sincerity and integrity._
> 
> _Beware most strictly of any outbursts of emotion that may engender needless complications, of any fraternal contention and strife that may create confusion, lead you astray and cause you to lose the confidence of the world._
> 
> _Let the entire nation continue as one family from generation to generation, ever firm in its faith of the imperishableness of its divine land, and mindful of its heavy burden of responsibilities, and the long road before it.  Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the future.  Cultivate the ways of rectitude, nobility of spirit, and work with resolution so that you may enhance the innate glory of the Imperial State and keep pace with the progress of the world._
> 
> _-_ _Emperor Hirohito,[Accepting the Potsdam Declaration](https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hirohito.htm), Radio Broadcast; transmitted by Domei and Recorded by the Federal Communications Commission, 14 August 1945_

 

_August 15, 1945_

On the morning after the surrender, Wakatoshi goes for a run.

He begins on his usual path – heading straight down the road, then winding up through the mountain trails – but continues on further than he ever has, pumping his legs until civilization falls away behind him like a distant memory.  There are no more houses, no more streets, no more people – only the sky and the forest and the road beneath him.  Only his heartbeat and his thoughts, pounding in endless circles.

It is quiet, here in the mountains.  Once, if Wakatoshi waited and listened, he could hear airplanes crossing the sky - fresh from the factory, splitting the soft white clouds and racing on towards the front, with engines rumbling like thunder and burning like victory.  But now, all he can hear are the birds calling out to each other, like friends trying to find each other in a dark stadium.  No airplanes.  Not even cars.  Just birds.

Birds – and Wakatoshi.  Feet pounding on the path.  Heart pounding in his chest.  Thoughts pounding in his mind.

He asked his father, once, why he fought.  Why he was willing to give everything in this war.

 _Honor,_ his father said.   _The honor of our family and of our country.  We are fighting to prove that Japan has the right to stand at the top of the world.  Japan is a strong nation, of strong people.  Like me, and like you._

A strong nation, of strong people.  Wakatoshi remembers the tremble in Emperor Hirohito’s voice, when he said that the suffering of this country will certainly be great.  He wonders if great suffering will help prove that Japan has the right to stand at the top of the world, or if it will only make other countries think that Japan is weak, and never should have tried to fight to begin with.  He wonders if the nation is moving backwards into a time of samurai and bandits and chaos.  He wonders if his father fought for nothing.

Wakatoshi tries to put those thoughts out of his head.  He takes a deep breath and charges faster and faster up the mountain path, runs until his legs are burning and he has to stop on the side of the road, doubled over and panting as though he just narrowly escaped certain death.

After a moment, he picks his head up – his father always said that bending over after a workout is bad for the stomach – and leans up against a nearby oak tree.  The tree is strong, with a thick trunk and sturdy limbs.  It reminds Wakatoshi of a tree in the park he used to visit with his father – a tree that he would work to climb faster every time, stretching between branches and pulling onto limbs until he could see the whole city spread out beneath him.  Until he could see his father standing at the bottom, smiling and telling him he was the best tree-climber in all of Japan.

Wakatoshi doesn’t know if his father fought for nothing, but he knows what his father would want him to do now.

And before he quite realizes what he’s doing, before he has time to tell himself he’s too old for this, Wakatoshi is climbing the tree – stretching between branches and pulling onto limbs.  He scales it all the way to the top, where the branches are more slender and the wind whips around his face, trying to pull him off.

Wakatoshi settles down on one of the more stable branches and looks out at the city, spread out below the mountain like a landscape painting – except that no landscape painting would have so many holes, so many ruins, so many places that used to be.  It’s almost terrifying, to see a city so empty.  As though its only occupants are ghosts.

It’s almost terrifying – except that, as Wakatoshi watches, the sun rises further in the horizon, light painting the city in silver and gold.  Cars begin to move on the roads.  People begin to emerge from the buildings.  The world starts to turn again.

 

 

_August 19, 1945_

Satori misses his sister.

He takes the train from Ushita to Shinjuku Station, then transfers to ride out into the suburbs.  Hinode, his ticket says.  He remembers the town only vaguely – remembers a small, red brick house with a garden out back, a long, low tatami room upstairs where he and Minako rolled out their mats next to Akira’s.  He remembers staying up late, listening wide-eyed as his cousin told stories about his school, his training, the fight he was about to join.  He remembers his mother’s face, white as chalk, when she heard the news from her sister.

The city rolls by outside the window.  Satori wouldn’t know it was a city if not for the signs on the stations and the writing on his ticket.  It looks like a deserted battleground, or like ruins from one of his comics – all empty shells of buildings, piles of ash, torn-up billboards that once held patriotic slogans.  Everything is quiet.  He doesn’t think it should be this quiet.  There are clusters of black on top of the telephone poles – it takes him a moment to realize that they’re birds, waiting for someone to string the wires back up.

People get on the train, people get off the train.  There’s never a free seat – usually the new passengers have to stand, packed into the front of the car like Satori’s old toy soldiers stuffed into a cardboard box, when Honda-sensei made him take them to the dump.  They hold onto the handrails, knuckles white, and keep their eyes on their shoes.  Satori has the oddest thought that they’re shadows, remnants of people that gave up on searching for their bodies.

But then, if the other passengers are shadows, so is he.  Nobody notices him.  Nobody speaks to him.  Nobody asks if he’s alright, or offers him advice, or tries to figure out where his parents are.  Even his neighbor, an old woman with a black scarf tied around her head, goes to sleep as soon as she sits down.

The city rolls by outside the window.  Every so often, Satori sees something interesting – a building that fell apart in an unusual way, or a man with a weird mustache, or a cloud that looks kind-of like a monster – and turns, expecting someone else to be there.  Expecting a curious gaze to look up at him, look where he’s pointing.  Expecting round eyes to go wide and a small mouth to make that excited squealing noise, the one she makes when she gets excited, the one he always found annoying.  But all that’s next to him is some old lady, snoring like a pig with indigestion.

Satori doesn’t see the point of looking for interesting things if there’s nobody to show them to, so he stops looking.  He reaches down and grabs his backpack – the one bag he was able to take with him, filled with everything he’d brought to school that day.  Satori rifles through its contents.  A pair of socks.  Extra underwear.  His gym uniform.  His science textbook.  Two notebooks.  A letter from Honda-sensei.  A wallet with a few hundred yen.  A note his mother had put in his lunch that morning: _Good luck on your test today, Satori!  Ganbatte!  Love, Oka-san._

Finally, Satori finds it – the comic he bought at the train station.  It’s an American comic, the lettering strange block print that Satori doesn’t understand.  A man in a red, white, and blue suit and a cool-looking helmet is fighting bad guys.

Satori flips through the pages until he has the pictures memorized.

 

 

_August 20, 1945_

There is a new boy in Wakatoshi’s classroom.

Wakatoshi does not remember names well.  The letters slip out of his head like leaves down a river, kanji blending together like ripples in a pond. He does not remember names, and he’s even worse with faces - for some reason, he’s always had trouble holding eye contact.   If given a list of all of the children in his class, 3A of Hinode Junior High, he would not recognize half of them.  But he knows the precise shape of the pigtails of the girl who sits in front of him, knows the color of the pencil the girl on the end chews on when she gets bored, knows the rhythm of the boy whose hands always shift beneath his desk as though he’s constantly searching for reasons to escape.  He knows which heads belong in the front row and the back row, the shapes of the hands that go up first when Kinomori-sensei asks a question.  He knows people.

And he knows that this person, sitting alone in the empty classroom, is new.  This person is a boy with dark red hair, the color of the last embers of a dying bonfire, cut in a strange shape that reminds Wakatoshi of an upside-down bowl.  The boy has dark eyes, too-large, with rings around them, as though he hasn’t slept in years.  And he looks haunted – like a spirit just given physical form after eternities spent incorporeal, terrified he’ll vanish back into thin air at any moment.  It takes a moment for Wakatoshi to realize that this is because the boy is _shaking_ – minutely, imperceptibly shaking, but shaking nonetheless.  Like a leaf in the wind.

Every day for the past six months, Wakatoshi has sat in the fifth seat of the fourth row back from the chalkboard.  It is the perfect seat – in the exact middle of the classroom, an equal distance from the board and the door.  A hiding space in plain sight.  Today, the new boy is in that seat.

Wakatoshi strides easily, not too slowly or too quickly, to the sixth seat in the fourth row back from the chalkboard, and sits down next to him.

For five minutes (Wakatoshi estimates – he hasn’t counted the seconds) the classroom is silent.  Peaceful.  Waiting, like a city just before sunrise.  Then, little by little, the class arrives, bringing with it noise, a slow crescendo of notebooks opening, papers rustling, voices asking _how are you?_ and _have you done the math homework?_ and _did you see what Iku is wearing today?_  The classroom fills, slowly and easily as water pouring into a flask – but it leaves the new boy untouched.  Ignored.

Instead of reading over his notes the way Wakatoshi usually does before class, he watches the boy.  He watches the curve of the boy’s red hair, the flat line of his mouth, the dark caverns of his eyes, endlessly scanning the classroom yet never caught in a glance.  Wakatoshi wants to ask his classmates how they fail to notice – what could possibly be more interesting than this new presence in their midst – but he does not know how to phrase the question without sounding rude, so he stays silent.

And then, with a loud rap, the room is called to attention.

“Good morning, class,” Kinomori-sensei says.  She is as neat and orderly as usual in her long skirt and pressed white shirtwaist, dark hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck.  Wakatoshi has not seen her change her uniform since before the war began.

“Good morning, Kinomori-sensei,” the class echoes.  The new boy, Wakatoshi notices, stays silent.

“Class, this morning we have a new student,” Kinomori-sensei goes on.  “Tendou Satori, would you please stand so that your classmates can see you?”

There is a squeaking noise to Wakatoshi’s left, the scraping of metal on concrete – and then the boy in Wakatoshi’s seat stands, unfolding himself like a crumpled piece of paper abandoned halfway through becoming a crane.  He is taller than Wakatoshi expected, but he does not stand like someone tall.  He stands like a building made of paper, ready to collapse at any moment.

“Tendou is joining us from Kaita Technical School.  He was in the advanced class there, but every school has a different academic program, so if he has any questions about the material we cover, please help him out.  Tendou, is there anything you would like to say to the class?”

The boy – Tendou, Wakatoshi corrects himself, his name is Tendou – stands in place for a few seconds.  All eyes turn to him.  He shakes, like a paper building in an earthquake.  He opens his mouth, then closes it.  He sits back down.

“Tendou, I am sure your classmates will make you feel welcome here.  We’ll be starting by going over last night’s literature reading.  Please take out your textbooks and turn to page fifty-six,” Kinomori-sensei says.

Most of the class takes out last night’s literature reading – from a textbook covering important traditional poetry – and turns to page fifty-six.  Tendou does not.  Tendou sits and stares at his desk, his fingers tracing the ridges around the edges as though searching for something to hold on to.

It occurs to Wakatoshi that Tendou cannot take out last night’s reading, because Tendou would not have known what last night’s reading was until now, much less purchased a copy of the textbook.  He takes out his own book, turns to page fifty-six, and pushes it to the left side of his desk.

For the first time that morning, Tendou’s wide, dark eyes turn to Wakatoshi.

Wakatoshi points to the poem Kinomori-sensei is now discussing – something about pine trees as a metaphor for the friendship between two brothers.  Tendou looks at him for another moment, then nods.

As he bends over Wakatoshi’s book, Wakatoshi thinks he catches a flicker of something – something stronger – in Tendou’s eyes.

 

The rest of the morning goes something like this: Kinomori-sensei will ask the class to take out some textbook, or worksheet, or page of notes.  Wakatoshi will take out his copy, place it on the left side of his desk, and angle it so that Tendou can see.  Their heads will bend together – two sets of eyes focusing intently on material meant for one.  Neither of them will ever speak – sometimes Tendou will tug on the corner of a page to let Wakatoshi know he’s done reading, or Wakatoshi will tilt his head to ask if Tendou understands – but they communicate only like this, in gestures and glances.  Their communication is easy, as though they’re two gears from the same machine, turning in tandem.

Tendou does not talk – he doesn’t ever raise his hand, or blurt out questions, or whisper furtively like the other students in their class.  Wakatoshi does not dwell on this.  He’s content to sit quiet, reading, pointing, helping without words.  He feels – quiet, if quiet can be a feeling.  As though all of his thoughts, all of his concerns about the end of the war and his mother and what he’s expected to do with his life, have been packed neatly into a small cardboard box, tied up with string, and placed at the back of the pantry _._

The morning passes, more quickly than any of Wakatoshi’s mornings have in a long time – without any glances at the clock until the bell rings for lunch time.

He packs away his books.  Stands.  Turns to go – then turns back.

Tendou is watching him.  His body is tense, his hands hanging limply at his sides.  His dark eyes are quiet, not expectant so much as ready.  Ready to be left behind.  Ready for the inevitable.

Wakatoshi holds out his hand.

Moments pass.  The classroom empties around them, until the room outside Wakatoshi’s mind is as quiet as the thoughts within.  Tendou watches, watches – then stands.  He does not take Wakatoshi’s hand, but he nods, ever so slightly.  The same way he nodded when Wakatoshi offered him a literature textbook, turned to page fifty-six.

Wakatoshi leads, Tendou follows.  They go to the spot where Wakatoshi eats lunch every day: an abandoned classroom at the end of the hall.  Hinode Junior High does not have as many students enrolled as it was built to accommodate, nor enough instructors to teach the students it currently has.  Wakatoshi has overheard Kinomori-sensei and one of the other teachers talk of combining the junior high and high school, keeping all of the children in one place – but for now, the building is full of old classrooms like this, chalkboards dusty with old wartime slogans never erased, broken chairs piled in one corner like toy soldiers tossed aside after their owner grew up.

Wakat oshi likes the empty classroom for its quiet, its solitude.  He comes here to escape the constant chattering of his classmates.  But today, he doesn’t need to find quiet – he brought the quiet with him.

He sits down against the wall next to the door, the cracked plaster cool and smooth against his back.  Tendou slides down next to him.  They take out their lunches and eat quickly, silent save for the rustling of wrappers and chewing of rice.

When he’s done eating, Wakatoshi pulls out his biology textbook.  He’s read it through ten times already, even the material he doesn’t need to know for class, but he likes looking at the diagrams of plants and animals, microbes and food chains.  Likes learning how all the different life forms on earth work together to make the world productive and fruitful.  It’s never boring, to him.

He’s tracing through the carbon cycle when he hears rustling beside him, and turns to discover that Tendou brought a book, too.  Tendou’s book is slimmer than Wakatoshi’s, and more colorful.  It’s full of pictures of a man – big and strong, with blond hair and perfect teeth – beating up bad guys and saying cool things.  Or at least, Wakatoshi assumes the man is saying cool things – he can’t read any of the words.  They’re in English.  He thinks.

Wakatoshi’s pretty sure Tendou can’t read English either.  Instead, he traces its pictures with his index finger, and sometimes turns the book to show Wakatoshi if something is particularly cool – a good punch, or kick, or explosion.  In return, Wakatoshi shows Tendou his favorite pages from his biology textbook – Parts of a Cell, and Alternate Generations, and Nitrogen Fixation, and Digestive System of a Cow.

They sit there for all of lunch, reading alone and together.  When the bell rings to signal the end of lunch, they sit up, startled, then look at each other for a silent moment, hesitating before closing their books.

Wakatoshi can’t remember the last time he enjoyed lunch hour this much.  He doesn’t ask Tendou if they could do this again tomorrow – he knows they will.

 

Ushijima shows up at the schoolyard one late summer afternoon with another boy in tow.

Well, not _in tow_ so much as following two paces behind – watching Ushijima’s moves intently with big, dark eyes the color of sunlight shadowed by a cloud.  Reon recognizes the boy quickly – he’s new in their class, had just arrived that morning.  He stood up when the teacher introduced him, but didn’t say anything.  Reon wonders if he’ll be more vocal now.

“Ready?” Ushijima asks.  He holds up the purple plastic ball he keeps in his knapsack – he and Reon like to toss it around after school.  When Reon first suggested they play catch, after he transferred here a couple of months ago, he proposed it as a break between sitting around bored in school and sitting around bored at home.  But now, this game feels like practice – practice for what, Reon isn’t sure.

“Yeah,” Reon says.  “And who’s this?” he adds, gesturing at the new kid.

“Tendou,” Ushijima answers.  The kid – Tendou – startles at his name, like a small child suddenly confronted by a crowded city plaza, unable to find his parents.

“How’re you doing, Tendou?” Reon asks, approaching him and extending a hand.  His father always used to say that a firm handshake is the best way to make a good first impression.  He had learned the art of the firm handshake at a conference with a group of European schoolteachers once, before Reon was born, and thought that it would make him seem more impressive, more worldly, more trustworthy.

Tendou stares at Reon’s hand as though he’s never seen one before, then takes two slow steps back.

“He doesn’t talk,” Ushijima says.

“And doesn’t shake hands, either,” Reon observes.  “Okay.  Does he play catch, then?”

Ushijima looks at Tendou.  Tendou looks at Reon, then at Ushijima, then at his own thin, knobbly hands.  His dark eyes are unreadable – and Reon’s father used to say that any kid will open up after a few kind words, but Reon is starting to think that this may be a special case.

“Okay,” he says again.  “Well, Tendou, if you ever want to join us, just ask.  Or,” Reon adds, considering, “let us know, somehow.”

Reon heads to the other side of the schoolyard and bends his knees, assuming a ready stance.  Ushijima picks up the ball, leans back, and throws – sending the ball zooming past Reon into the bushes next to the rusty playground.  Sometimes, Reon wonders if it’s possible that his friend could be growing stronger every day.

By the time he’s dug the ball out of the bushes, Tendou has taken a seat against the front wall of the school and is flipping through some kind of book.  He looks up occasionally as Reon and Ushijima toss their ball back and forth, dark eyes following their movements intently.

It makes Reon a little nervous, to have someone else watching.  Ushijima is stronger than he is – can throw further, and faster, and higher – but that’s never bothered him until now, when he can practically feel Tendou taking some kind of mental notes about how superior Ushijima is.

But then, Ushijima fumbles a catch, trips over an exposed root, and lands face-down in the dirt with a _thump._

Reon rushes over to make sure his friend is okay, of course – but he can’t completely stifle his laughter.  Ushijima looks like a felled oak tree, if an oak tree could look surprised.

As Reon helps Ushijima up, he glances over at Tendou – and catches the last moments of a smile on the other boy’s face.  Smiling, he doesn’t look intimidating, or strange, or as though he’s judging Reon’s every move – he just looks happy.  As though, well, he just watched his friend make a fool of himself.

Reon smiles back.

 

 

_September 2, 1945_

It’s been one year since it happened.

Once, at the summer festival, Reon was separated from his parents. Somewhere between the taiko drums and takoyaki carts, they disappeared into the crowd, and he was alone. He remembers being a child lost in a sea of people - all around him, voices surged, bodies pressed, the drums drowned out his heartbeat.

Now, he stands in the midst of ruins. This place is empty – has been empty for one year – but he still feels like that child lost at the festival.  Stuck in the familiarity of the unfamiliar.  Lost in a place he knows like the back of his hand.  Wishing desperately that any moment now, his parents will come scoop him up and hold him close and tell him they’re very sorry and they promise they’ll never leave him again.

But now, he has not lost his parents at the summer festival.  He has lost his parents here.  And this time, they are impossibly far.

Reon walks among the wreckage easily, naturally, as though he’s been here a hundred times before.  He _has_ been here a hundred times before.  He learned to read in that classroom looking out onto the courtyard, learned the names of the most powerful shoguns in that desk with the off-balance legs, learned long division at that chalkboard now dusty with ash.

If Reon closes his eyes, he can pretend that, any moment now, the school bell will ring and rooms full of children will settle down at their desks, hands neatly folded like the petals of flowers.  His mother will rap her ruler on the chalkboard to scare the girls in the back row passing notes into paying attention, and his father will open his lesson to the youngest class with a song.  Smells of chalk and old textbooks will waft through the hallways, and a new day will begin easy and naturally as the sun raising its sleepy golden head over the horizon –

Reon opens his eyes.  The classrooms are empty shells, desks reduced to piles of splinters and chalkboards scorched to ash.  With every step he takes through the hallway, the floorboards creak closer to shattering.  The air stinks of soot and rot and ruin.  The only learning that has taken place in this building for the past year is how to survive after disaster, and the only student failed his exam.

He knows, intellectually, that this isn’t as bad as it could be.  Reon still has a roof over his head, clothes on his back, food to eat.  His grandfather’s pension is sufficient enough to take care of an extra lodger.  And most of the students got out.  Many of the teachers got out.  The tragedy didn’t even make the newspapers – what’s a provincial school accidentally bombed when thousands of soldiers are sacrificing themselves and the Emperor needs every citizen to do his utmost for the grand war?

The tragedy didn’t even make the newspapers.  But Reon stands here, one year later, and thinks that newspapers wouldn’t have been enough.  Flowers weren’t enough, prayers weren’t enough.  Nothing short of a guarantee that this will never happen again would be enough – and Reon’s smart enough and old enough to know that not even a god has the power to make that guarantee.

If Reon closes his eyes, he can hear the thunderous booms of man-made lightning crashing down from the sky.  He can smell the smoke, feel the ground shake beneath him.  He can see flames licking at the edges of chalkboards and patriotic posters.  He can hear his friends crying – and his father screaming at them to run.

It’s been one year.  He thought he’d be over this by now.  But he doesn’t know what “over this” means, much less how to get there.

Reon opens his eyes.  They’re wet, stinging.  His mother always told him to set a good example for the other children, to keep his emotions to himself, to never let anyone see him cry.

But now, there’s nobody left to see him.

 

 

_September 6, 1945_

Hayato runs his fingers over his father’s army jacket.

It arrived yesterday in a small gray box labelled hastily in some secretary’s messy handwriting.  A box of sewing supplies sits on the table next to Hayato’s bed, and the small gray box sits on the bed in front of him, open to reveal this jacket, an ID badge, a couple of photographs, and a form letter about how Yamagata Masaru had nobly given his life for his country.  When his mother opened it, she began to sob.

She’s still sobbing now.  Hayato can hear her through the thin plaster wall between the master bedroom and the living room.  Sometimes, he thinks she’ll never stop sobbing – tears will just keep flooding out of her eyes until she runs out of water and melts in the middle of her nightgown.  Hayato hopes that won’t happen.  Mostly because the stain would be impossible to get out of the carpet.

It doesn’t make any sense to Hayato, his mother sobbing.  It’s not as though their family is any worse off now than it was before the war, when they lived shivering from day to day, hiding in the closet or the basement or the rooftop or anywhere _he_ couldn’t reach.  Anywhere safe from grabbing hands and stumbling limbs and a voice heavy with alcohol and rage.   _Where is that useless son of mine?  Why can’t he come out and face me like a man?  Why can’t he –_

Hayato runs his fingers over his father’s army jacket.

It’s worn, green leather faded and cracking like an old country road the day after an earthquake.  The seams are wearing thin, and the arms are stained with coffee or blood, and the embroidery above the front pocket is barely legible.

_Yamagata Masaru, fourth infantry regiment, third rifle company._

This jacket was given to Hayato’s father on the last day of training.  A badge of accomplishment for completing a grueling assignment, a grim reminder of the horrors to come.  A jacket exactly like those of all the others in his regiment, save for the name on the front.

Hayato imagines his father wearing this jacket into battle.  Imagines him wiping his sweaty forehead with the back of his sleeve, and letting the buttons fall open as he charges through the forest, and ripping off a piece to help stop the bleeding from a comrade’s wound.  Imagines that blood is the source of the dark stain on the jacket’s left side, instead of beer from a night of revelry.  Imagines that his father’s life in the war was any nobler than his life at home.

A box of sewing supplies sits on the table next to Hayato’s bed.  He took it from his mother’s closet a couple of hours after the package arrived.  She has yet to notice its absence.  He opens it, rummages through thread and pincushions and mismatching buttons until he finds a pair of scissors.

The scissors are blunt, but they slice through the leather of the jacket without much difficulty.  The slick sound of fabric cutting is quiet as a whisper in the darkness.

Near the bottom of the box, Hayato finds a scrap of fabric from an old shirt of his own near the bottom of the box and a needle already strung with black thread.  The resulting repair is sloppy – he learned mending in year six with the rest of his class, then never had an opportunity to practice – but effective enough.  When Hayato turns off his lamp, he can barely tell that the jacket is any different.

He slips out of bed and pads, quiet, over to the window.  It is cold tonight, and the sky is dark, only a few stars peering out from among the clouds.  He’s been scaling the roof since his father expressly told him not to at age eight – the best shingles to grab and the best spots to place his feet now come with practiced ease.  Before long, Hayato is perched at the zenith of the structure, looking out at the faint lights of a city already rebuilding.

There are few stars above him.  Just pinpricks.  Unimportant.  Distant.  About as relevant to him as a father who stopped sending letters the day the price of postage went up.

Hayato takes a box of matches out of his pocket.  He strikes one of them once – twice – three times – until it comes alive, a tiny prick of fire burning in his fingers like an electric lightbulb flickering to life.

In Hayato’s other hand, there is a piece of leather clenched tightly.  A piece of leather cut away from an old army jacket.   _Yamagata Masaru, fourth infantry regiment, third rifle company._ He hesitates for one second – two – then brings the scrap up to the match.  It catches fire easily.  Hayato drops it down the chimney and watches as it burns, burns, then goes out.

The roof is cold tonight.  Wind is swirling, trying to push him off with greedy hands.  Hayato shrugs on his new jacket, leaving the front unbuttoned, and uses a new match to light a cigarette.

Downstairs, his mother is still crying.

 

 

_September 10, 1945_

Semi Eita makes himself known almost before Kinomori-sensei can introduce him.

“Class, we have a new student,” she says, the same way she did when Tendou arrived a few weeks before.  But this time, as she articulates the last syllable of _student_ , a light blond head is rising from the back right corner, followed by a sharp face, all harsh lines and angles, and a pair of bright eyes staring down all twenty-four students in the class.

“Semi Eita,” he informs them.  His voice is short vowels and strong consonants – it reminds Wakatoshi of a samurai sword, cutting out everything that isn’t necessary.  “From Hamura Academy.  Excited to be here or whatever.  My uncle’s house has a slide projector.”

Semi stands there for another moment, arms crossed, staring at his new classmates as though daring them to challenge his presence.  He then sits down with a _thud_ and pushes his chair backwards with a _screech,_ leaning back and fixing his gaze on the chalkboard.

“Ah, thank you, Semi,” Kinomori-sensei says.  She reaches up with one hand to fiddle with the bun at the nape of her neck.  Wakatoshi has never seen her this flustered.  “Now, class, please take out your geometry homework …”

Semi does not take out his geometry homework.  Semi leans back in his chair and folds his arms behind his head, smirking as though the very concept of geometry homework is beneath him.  When Kinomori-sensei asks for the answer to a conceptual question, he raises his hand lazily, and does not wait to be called on before announcing the answer – the correct answer.

This performance goes on for the remainder of the morning: when Kinomori-sensei asks a question, Semi is the first with his hand raised, and the first to answer.  His answers are all correct, to the point where Wakatoshi wonders if he is somehow reading Sensei’s mind, picking names and dates and definitions out from beneath the blue brooch in her hair.

The performance is impressive, certainly.  Wakatoshi notices the whispers of his classmates, flaring up a little louder every time Semi gets a question right.  He notices the notes being passed from one desk to another, the glances growing less and less obvious with every raised hand.  But he can only think about what might happen when Semi finally, eventually, does not have the correct answer.  About whether he’ll shout, or curse, or fall sullenly silent.

On the day Tendou arrived, he reminded Wakatoshi of a paper building in an earthquake, shaking with the ground.  Today, Semi reminds Wakatoshi of a stone building laced with dynamite – solid at a glance, but ready to explode at a moment’s notice.

When the bell rings for lunch, the classroom empties quickly, as it always does.  Wakatoshi stays in his seat, watching his classmates go, then turns to his left – Tendou is bent over his desk, reading through his newly-acquired literature textbook.

“Hey,” someone says.  Someone with short vowels, strong consonants.

Wakatoshi looks up to find Semi watching him carefully, arms crossed over his chest and a scowl on his face.

“What’s your name?” Semi asks.

“Ushijima Wakatoshi,” Wakatoshi answers.

“Why didn’t you look at me, Ushijima Wakatoshi?” Semi demands.  He takes a step closer – if he wanted, Wakatoshi could reach out and tug at his blond hair.

“What do you mean?”

Semi’s arms drop from his chest to his sides, and his fingers clench at the seams of his uniform pants.  “The whole class was looking at me, when I answered all those questions.  But you weren’t.  Why not.”

Wakatoshi considers the question, then says, “I’m not easily impressed.”

“Oh.”  Semi seems taken aback, eyes going wide – but he recovers quickly, his scowl deepening as he points at Tendou.  “And what about him?  He didn’t look either.”

Tendou is still flipping through the textbook.  He doesn’t like reading the poems, but he likes looking at the pictures – at the calligraphy landscapes, the mountains and oceans.  Tendou pointed out his favorite illustrations to Wakatoshi at lunch yesterday.

“Tendou isn’t easily impressed, either,” Wakatoshi informs Semi.

“He can’t tell me that himself?” Semi asks.  He takes a step closer to Tendou, peering over his shoulder at the textbook.  Tendou stops flipping pages, but he keeps moving, constantly bouncing his knee under the desk like an out-of-control drumbeat.

Semi starts circling Tendou’s desk, scowl melting into a smirk like a vulture circling a silent battlefield, searching for its next meal.  “What’s wrong with him, huh?  Can’t talk?  Won’t talk?  Doesn’t know how to talk?  Is he stupid or something?”

“Leave him alone.”  Wakatoshi stands up, but it doesn’t seem to do anything – Semi just keeps circling and Tendou stays put, as though his desk has grown bars and chains.

“Actually, _I’m_ talking to him,” Semi says.  He leans in, putting his face within a few centimeters of Tendou’s.  “What’s up with you, huh?  Is something wrong with you?  Some kinda defect of the mind?  Like your brain just won’t connect to your mouth?  Or maybe this isn’t nature, it’s nurture.  Maybe your mom and dad never taught you how to talk.  Maybe they never talked to you when you were little, and it stunted you.  Maybe they never thought you were interesting enough to talk to.  Or maybe – maybe they _abandoned_ you.  Maybe you never had any parents at all.  Maybe –”

As Semi taunts, each sentence sharper than the last, Wakatoshi starts to hear a strange sound – like a siren, he thinks, but that doesn’t make sense, because they never hear sirens in Hinode, not now that the war’s over –

That’s not a siren, Wakatoshi realizes.  It’s Tendou.  Tendou has his hands pressed over his ears, his eyes squeezed shut, and he’s _screaming_ – a high-pitched wail getting louder and louder with every word out of Semi’s mouth.

“Stop,” Wakatoshi tells Semi.  Semi doesn’t seem to hear him, so he repeats it, louder.  “ _Stop._  You’re hurting him.”

Semi stops short, then jerks his head around and looks at Wakatoshi, wild-eyed as though he just now realized the full extent of what he’s saying.

“I’m sorry,” Semi says.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t …”

But Tendou just keeps screaming – the noise getting louder and louder as he stands up, pushes past Semi and Wakatoshi, and races out of the classroom, hands still pressed over his ears as though demons are chasing him.

“I’m sorry,” Semi says again.

“That doesn’t matter,” Wakatoshi tells him.  He bends down, closes Tendou’s literature textbook, and arranges his things neatly on top of the desk, then follows Tendou out of the room.

 

“Look, I – I just wanted him to talk!” Semi pleads.

He’s facing down Ushijima and Reon in the schoolyard after final bell, hands pressed together almost comically like a child pleading with his parents.  Reon had seen Tendou race out of school earlier – hell, the entire school had; it was impossible to miss how fast he was running and how loud he was screaming.  He’d reminded Reon of a bird fleeing the forest before an earthquake, warning everyone he passes that natural disaster is about to hit.

The whole school saw Tendou run out, and then nobody saw him for the rest of the afternoon.

And Ushijima had told Reon about _why_ he ran – about the taunting, the circling, the insistence that something was _wrong_ with him.  Ushijima said that Semi apologized afterwards, but Reon is not feeling forgiving right now.

“Tendou will talk when he wants to talk,” Reon says.  “There was no reason for you to taunt him.”

“But I – he – he was creeping me out, just sitting there and not saying anything,” Semi protests.  “I didn’t get it.  I wanted to know _why._.  I hate not knowing why.”

Reon looks at Ushijima.  Ushijima looks back at Reon.  Ushijima takes people at face value, believes them when they say they are sorry.  But Reon is the son of two schoolteachers, and he’s learned that kids are liable to say anything if they think it will get them what they want.  Semi Eita may be the smartest member of their class now, but he’s still only thirteen.

“You should’ve waited for him to tell you himself,” Reon says to Semi, crossing his arms over his chest.  “But instead you couldn’t be patient, and you made him run –”

“I hurt him,” Semi interrupts.  “I know.  I didn’t mean to.  I’m sorry.”

“Tell him yourself.”

Reon and Semi both turn to Ushijima – Reon feels his mouth drop open, sees his expression mirrored on Semi’s face.

“What?”

“Tell him yourself,” Ushijima repeats, pointing behind him to where Tendou has emerged from the school building, textbooks in hand.  He must’ve gone back to get his things when none of them were looking.  His face is smudged with dirt, his eyes are red-rimmed, and his fingers, where they clench at his books, are white at the knuckles.

“Tendou, I’m sorry,” Semi says as soon as Tendou is close enough to hear without him raising his voice.  He looks directly at the other boy, concentrating intently as though this is a test he’s determined to pass.  Tendou pauses and then takes a step back, wary, but doesn’t run.  “I didn’t mean to hurt you.  I just wanted to know what was going on.  It’s scary being new here, and I’m - I’m not very good at controlling what I say.  My dad used to help me with it, but now he’s - um.  Anyway.  I’m sorry that I scared you.  You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to - and I hope we can be friends.”

Semi stands up straight and points his chin at the air, but his eyes dart back and forth from Tendou to Reon to Ushijima, and his feet shift from side to side, as though he’s trying to stand in the middle of an earthquake.

For a long moment, the schoolyard is silent.  Three pairs of eyes stare at Tendou, but Tendou only looks at Semi – searching him with eyes dark and discerning, eyes haunted by something harder to move past than a thirteen-year-old with attitude problems.  A bird calls, somewhere past the road.

“Friends,” Tendou says.  His voice is rough, scratchy from disuse.

And then, he walks past them and out of the schoolyard.  Ushijima and Reon watch him go in silence.  Semi opens and closes his mouth a few times, then shrugs, as though trying to shake off uncertainty.

“Semi, do you play ball?” Ushijima asks, once Tendou’s out of sight.

“Sometimes, yeah,” Semi replies.  “Why?”

“Get here half an hour before school starts, tomorrow morning,” Ushijima tells him.  And with that, he too heads out, his strides long and steady.

Ushijima takes people at face value, believes them when they say they’re sorry.  Reon thinks that, perhaps, he could stand to learn something about forgiveness.

He reaches out and claps Semi on the back.  “See you tomorrow.”

 

 

_September 24, 1945_

Hayato is early.

The sun hangs low over the mountains, a sphere of gold painting the landscape in soft shades of gray.  The town around him is still slumbering, shops not yet open and streets empty, waiting to be filled with men and women walking to work, children racing to school.  The road is dusty, lined with green cryptomeria trees.  It hasn’t been repaved in years, Hayato thinks, but the trees stand tall and proud, leading up into the mountains.  Birds are calling, chirping greetings from one tree to another.  There are no cars on the road – the only transportation is a lone train running from Musashi to Sannai, every half hour.

Hayato took that train, on its 6:30 A.M. run.  He’d had to ride it ten stops, watching the forest fly by past the windows with only an old woman carrying groceries and the train conductor for company.  He probably could have taken the 7 A.M. train – school doesn’t start until 7:30 – but he wanted to be early.  He wanted to be prepared.

Tokyo does not have enough resources for public education, not right now.  Schools had been kept up during the war, brave teachers struggling to stick to their lesson plans as more and more students moved out to the country, fleeing the bombs and fear – but now that the fighting is over, all of the problems that built up slowly over five years are revealing themselves, like a stone wall worn down by decades of wind and rain finally collapsing.  The American committee on education looked at Tokyo’s large public schools with too many students and small municipal schools with too few and shrugged its shoulders, saying in wordy memos and politically correct speeches, _look, we have no idea what to teach you kids, much less how to pay for rebuilding your classrooms when your whole country’s economy has gone to shit._

Essentially – Hayato’s class had five students in it, three of them were moving, and the school was scheduled to close within the month.  So, he’s transferring to a school a few districts over.  In Hinode, the Junior High and High Schools are combining to pool resources, and one of the junior high third-year instructors has been friends with Hayato’s mother since grade school, so she was able to secure him a spot.  Still, Hayato wanted to be early, on his first day – he’s barely been outside his neighborhood his entire life, and he has no idea what to expect from a new school, a new class, a new town.

Hayato finds the school easily enough – a small, red brick building, set off from the road by a pavement lot and a playground, rusty swings swaying back and forth in the morning breeze.  Hayato drops his bag in the crabgrass and takes a seat on one of the swings, watching the sky lighten as he pushes himself aimlessly.

He’s grown so used to the quiet and solitude, he almost falls off the swing when a low voice says, “Good morning.”

Hayato steadies himself, planting his feet in the ground, then turns to the speaker.  It’s a boy, probably about his age, with dark skin, closely-cropped hair, and a kind face, as though he’s constantly on the verge of smiling.

“Hey,” Hayato says.

The other boy takes a couple of steps forward and sticks out his hand.  “Oohira Reon, class 3A,” he introduces himself.  “You’re new, right?”

“Yeah.”  Hayato takes Oohira’s hand and gives it an uncertain shake – he’s never shaken hands with another kid before.  Oohira grips his hand tightly for a moment, then drops it.

After another second, Hayato realizes he should probably introduce himself, too.  “Yamagata Hayato,” he says.  “I’m transferring here – into your class, I think.”

“Our class is running out of free desks, but I’m sure we’ll be able to find something for you.”  Oohira turns towards the road, raising one hand to wave at another figure coming down the dirt road towards the school.  “Hey, Ushijima!  There’s another new kid in our class!”

 _Another?_ Hayato wonders.  How many new kids have they had?

The second boy – Ushijima, Hayato is assuming – is soon stopping in front of the swings.  He’s tall and broad, but not intimidating, exactly – he reminds Hayato of one of the trees he passed on his walk from the train station, standing guard for a war-ravaged town that has yet to find new purpose.

“Hello,” Ushijima says.

“Hi,” Hayato replies.  “I’m Yamagata.”  He sticks out his hand, a little uncertainly, but Ushijima doesn’t shake it – just stares at it, as though he isn’t sure what to do with it.  Maybe handshaking is just an Oohira thing, then.

“So, I’m here early because I wanted to give myself extra time in case I got lost finding this place,” Hayato says, “but why are you guys here so early?  School doesn’t start until 7:30, right?”

“It doesn’t, but we like to meet up before school and play catch,” Oohira explains.  He looks at Ushijima, expectant – and the taller boy rummages through his black knapsack, looking for something.

Ushijima’s brow furrows as he peers into his bag. He shakes it a couple of times, stares at it in vague confusion, then looks through it again.

“What’s wrong?” Oohira asks.

“I don’t have it.”

“Don’t have what?” Hayato wants to know.

“The ball.  Our ball.”  Ushijima peers at his bag as though it’s a question on a test he failed to study for.

Oohira takes the bag and looks through it himself, but comes up short.  “You had it yesterday, right?”

“I had it yesterday,” Ushijima confirms.  “I don’t have it now.”

Oohira shrugs.  He takes a seat on the swing next to Hayato’s, pushes off, and starts swinging back and forth.  “Guess we’ll just have to get a new one.  Or use your shoe, or something.”

“My shoe would not make a good throwing device,” Ushijima says, puzzled.

“It was a joke, Ushijima,” Oohira replies.

Ushijima stares at his friend for a moment, then apparently decides not to argue and takes the last swing.

“So, Yamagata, right?” Oohira asks.  At Hayato’s nod, he continues, “Where’re you from?”

“Asahicho,” Hayato replies.  “It’s a few train stops away, going into the city – but pretty small, nothing special.  My school’s closing down and my mom knows Kinomori-sensei, so I’m transferring here.”

“Makes sense,” Oohira says.  “What was the curriculum like there?”

“The usual, I guess?  Literature, history, science, math.  But my teacher got really weird, near the end of the war – I think her husband died in Okinawa, and it messed her up.  Like, she’d start crying in the middle of a lecture, or tell us that nothing we were learning really mattered, because the government would just use us as cannon fodder in the end.  None of us knew how to react - we’d never heard anything like that about the war before - but she didn’t get fired or anything.  There just weren’t any other teachers to replace her, I guess.”

Ushijima starts swinging faster, his arms and legs pumping until he’s practically flying above Hayato and Reon, swinging through the air like a plane shooting through the sky.  The frame of the swing set trembles in the ground.

“I wouldn’t blame her, I guess,” Oohira says slowly.  “If the most important person in your life is gone because of a war you don’t believe in, how are you supposed to teach that the war is worth fighting?  Now we have to go in and black out parts of our textbooks, because the Americans don’t want us to learn about the ideals of the war, but they haven’t decided what’s appropriate for us to learn instead.  It’s kinda scary, if you ask me.”

“You seem to know a lot about this stuff,” Hayato tells him.

Next to them, Ushijima has laid off a bit – he’s swaying through the air more slowly, propelled only by his own momentum.

Oohira shrugs.  “Well.  My parents were teachers.  So I try to pay attention.  I hate reading the newspapers, though – it’s all, _we will rebuild with dignity_ and _we will regain our place as an honorable nation in the eyes of the world_ but nobody knows _how._  Like all of our new diplomats are pretending that everything’s the same as before when nothing’s the same.”

“And they say that we have control over what the country will be like when it’s – it’s all under control of the Americans, isn’t it?” Hayato says.  “And _that’s_ really weird, that the country we were supposed to hate is now in charge.”

“I don’t know if the Americans are all bad, though.  Our friend Tendou, he collects American comic books – or, well, he only has two, but I think he _wants_ to collect them – and they seem pretty cool.  Actually, speaking of Tendou.”  Oohira pauses and drags his feet on the ground to slow his swing, pointing down the path at two figures approaching.

“Hey, Tendou!” Oohira shouts at the newcomers.  “Ushijima lost the ball – any idea where it is?”

Tendou – the shorter of the two, a skinny boy with dark red hair in a bowl cut – raises an eyebrow, takes something out of the front pocket of his backpack, and starts tossing it one-handed.  It’s a purple plastic ball, Hayato realizes.

The other boy – slightly taller, with light blond hair and sharp features that look like he’s just waiting for a reason to mock someone – starts laughing.  “See, I told you he wouldn’t notice,” he tells Tendou.

Tendou smiles slightly, then tosses the ball at Ushijima – who catches it, but at the expense of his balance, almost toppling backwards off his swing. When he regains his balance, he looks down at the ball in his hands, brow slightly furrowed. “Why did you have this?”

The boy with the light blonde hair just laughs harder. Next to him, Tendou is holding back a bigger smile too.

“So, catch?” Oohira asks, turning to Hayato.  “Since our ball was apparently not lost, just stolen?”

“Sure,” Hayato says.  He motions at Ushijima to toss him the ball and jumps off his swing, running towards the other end of the schoolyard.

 

 

_August 21, 1945_

The house is dark.

Well, of course it’s dark – it’s two o’clock in the morning – but it’s darker than Eita’s used to.  Used to be, if he woke up in the middle of the night, he’d be able to see the lights of the city out his bedroom window, glittering and gleaming like a contingent of stars.  And he’d be able to see a line of faint yellow under his door that meant his father was in his office, working on contracts and customers and columns of numbers until the sky grew pink-orange.

But now, the lights of the city have been reduced to a few measly pricks.  And his father’s office is dark as it’s never been dark.  As though a sea monster bled ink all over the contracts and customers and columns of numbers, drowning the office in inky black.

It’s dark, but Eita has no trouble navigating the long hallway between his room and his father’s office.  He lifts his arm up towards the wall, runs his fingers along the smooth wood screens as he walks.  He remembers when his father had this house built, ten years ago when war was a whisper passed in secret between members of the innermost circle and architects were eager to please as worshippers making offerings to a god.  This hallway is open and his room is lined with shoji, but his father’s office is all wood embellishments and thick leather armchairs.  He remembers asking his father why the house was divided in two, why his father never let guests past the leather and fur rugs and English lettering, and his father said, “A businessman does what he must to survive.”

Eita pushes open the door to the office.  It goes easily, quietly, on well-oiled hinges.

The office is dark – except that it isn’t, quite.  There’s a glint of light in the center, moonlight from the window reflecting on steel on top of the desk and back in an infinite loop.  The moon and the steel each make the other appear brighter than they truly are.  Each helps the other pretend it’s untarnished.

Eita takes two steps to the center of the office and picks up the katana.  It’s heavier than he expected.  And damp, from its recent cleaning.  He holds it out in front of him like a weapon of war, and for a moment, the moonlight throws its brilliance into his face.  He closes his eyes against the glare, then opens them.  Stares at the moon as though he could will it to darkness.

Sneaking the sword out of the house goes easily, quietly – his tiptoeing is merely a game, as all the servants were dismissed a week ago and he hasn’t seen his mother in two.  The front door creaks when Eita opens it – only slightly, but enough that he scratches its expensive green paint (imported from the West) when he tries to slow its passage.

He leaves the house sleeping, slumbering peacefully in a neighborhood of ghosts and rubble, gold leaf on the windowsills glinting softly.

Eita knows the path to the river.  He knows it in hazy dawn trudging off to school, knows it in midday sunlight racing to the dock, knows it in late starlight ambling with a father who needs a break from work he can’t - or won't - talk about.  Eita remembers _someday, son, I’ll explain everything_ promised with a fond smile and kicks a rock on the ground clear to the end of the street.  The remains of houses loom above him like mythical creatures in the night – the gods of war with nothing left to fight for, or the shades of men who took the fight too far.

The river, when he reaches it, is smooth.  No ripples, no wind.  Only a dark canvas, waiting to be painted over with the reflection of the morning sun.

The lights of the city have been reduced to a few measly pricks, as though a sea monster bled ink across the stars.

He thinks of whispers of war and manufactured thunder and promises that can never be kept, and then he throws the sword into the river.  It lands with a quiet splash and disappears into the dark.

“A businessman does what he must for _the country_ to survive,” Eita tells the river.

 

 

_October 29, 1945_

They are tearing down the factory today.

It’s strange, Kenjirou thinks – it doesn’t look like it’s about to be torn down.  The building stands steady, just as it has as long as Kenjirou can remember. Graying concrete walls support a thick tile roof, steel window frames glint softly in the morning sun.

Any moment now, a small army of factory workers will march up the front walk, talking and laughing over their morning coffee, shoving each other like schoolboys heading to class.  Any moment now, the engines will start rumbling, the steel will start pouring, and smoke will rise up out of the chimneys to paint the sky gray.  Any moment now – Kenjirou watches the factory, waiting for the foreman’s whistle, the clang of machinery, the shout of one man to another, easy as the calling of birds in the forest.

He watches.  Nothing happens.  He expected nothing to happen, but his throat still seizes up at the sight.

“Hey, you!” someone shouts, a few meters away.  Kenjirou assumes whoever it is isn’t talking to him.  “You!  Kid!  What’re you doin’ here?”

Kenjirou turns around.  There’s a workman in blue coveralls and a faded orange helmet staring at him, arms crossed against his chest.  His skin is tanned, and there are lines of dirt across his cheeks, as though he tried to wipe sweat off his face without remembering that he’d just been driving a tractor.  Kenjirou has never met him, but he seems intimately familiar - as though, any moment now, his glare will shift into a grin and he will hold his arms open for a hug.

“I asked you a question,” the workman says.

“Oh!  Sorry.”  Kenjirou sticks his hands in his pockets, takes them out again.  “I was just riding through here on my bike, and I noticed that the factory hasn’t started up as usual.”

The workman starts to laugh – a cruel laugh, cackling, like the sound of artillery firing in an empty field.  “Of course the factory hasn’t started up as usual!  What are you, some kind of idiot?”

“Yes, sir,” Kenjirou replies quickly, bowing his head.

“How’d ya miss all the signs?”

“Signs, sir?”  Kenjirou looks up – the workman is still staring at him as though he’s a cartoon in the Sunday paper – looks back down.

“The place’s getting demolished today,” the man explains.  “In a few minutes.  There’re signs with the blast day an’ time all over the place, I dunno how you could’ve missed ‘em.”

“I’m not very observant, sir,” Kenjirou says.

“Not very observant,” the workman repeats, chuckling.  “Well, observant or not, you’ve gotta get outta here.  This area’s gonna be rubble in about five minutes.  Think you can handle that?”

 _Think you can handle that?_  As though Kenjirou is some kind of rich kid, kept in the dark about what’s happening beyond his family’s compound.  His fingers stretch toward his palm, aching to form a fist – but he wills them to stay loose.  Nods twice, instead.  His head goes up and down almost robotically, like the arm of a machine in the factory.

“Great,” the workman says.  “Now get outta here.  I got better things to do than yell at _not very observant_ kids.”

Without another word, Kenjirou climbs onto his bike and pedals off, as fast as he can.  The road is unpaved and hasn’t been repaired since before the war, so he has to swerve to avoid holes and large stones.  He tries to make a game of it, like his father used to – two points for avoiding the potholes, three for the rocks, five for the tiny roots that stretch across the path like witch’s fingers, trying to grab your wheels –

He’s just narrowly missed a root when the blast goes off.  It’s loud, louder than thunder or earthquakes or bombs.  The ground lurches with the impact – so sudden and so strong, Kenjirou nearly loses his balance.

But he stays on.  He stays on, wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, and wills his legs to pedal faster.

 

 

_November 5, 1945_

There’s someone new in the principal’s office.

Eita is used to the hollow greetings of stiff chairs, peeling paint, and an aging secretary whose glasses belong in the fourteenth century – but this time, he’s met by a skinny kid with an absolute disaster of a blond bowlcut, staring at the wall as though he’s trying to eject dynamite into it with his mind.

“That’s my seat,” Eita tells the kid.

The kid continues glaring at the wall.  “So?”

“So, get out,” Eita says.

The kid doesn’t move.  There are three chairs up against the back wall of the waiting room.  They are equally hard, equally uncomfortable – but Eita likes the middle one.  Eita is accustomed to the middle one.  Once, when he had to wait a particularly long time, he scratched his initials into the seat.  He’s not about to let some upstart in a faded, never-even-heard-of-an-iron uniform take it from him.

“Did you not hear me?” Eita asks.  “I said, that’s _my seat._ ”

“I heard you,” the kid replies.

“Then _move._ ”

“ _No_.”

“Look, I’m older than you, taller than you, and _definitely_ stronger than you –”

The kid turns his glare on Eita - and, suddenly, he forgets what he was about to say.  He feels like he’s standing in the middle of a desert during a drought and he just decided to stare directly at the blazing sun.

Well.  He’s never noticed it before, but he thinks the seat on the right end looks a little cleaner than the other two.

“This isn’t over,” he hisses.

The kid just shrugs and goes back to staring at the wall.

A few minutes pass like that – both of them sitting, both of them staring, a distinct five centimeters of space maintained between their thighs.  And then, the secretary emerges from the inside part of the office and says, “Shirabu, Yamaida-sensei will see you in five minutes.  Semi, it might be a while.”

“So, _Shirabu,_ ” Eita says, drawing out the syllables until they sound less like a name and more like the noise a cat makes when you step on its tail.  “What’re you in for?”

“Yelling at my teacher,” Shirabu replies.  Eita waits for elaboration, but none is forthcoming.

“Really?” he asks, after a moment.  “That’s it?  I do that, like, four times a week.”

The kid doesn’t answer.  Eita feels blood rush to his head – he’s been the chief delinquent at this school for the past two months and he’s been kind-of growing to like it, thank you very much.  He doesn’t know what he did to deserve some young upstart coming in and stealing his throne.

“Why did you yell at her?” Eita asks.  He aims for conversational, but it comes out more confrontational.

“She said that even though the common soldiers who gave their lives for our country were still morally right, most of the people involved with the war were terrible and deserve our hatred,” Shirabu answers.  He keeps looking at the wall, but he crosses his arms against his chest, stiffening as though readying for a fight.

“And?” Eita prods.

“And _what_?”

“And that’s why you yelled at her?” Eita clarifies.  “I mean, _nobody_ in that war was morally right, but that’s not nearly as bad as some of the shit they spew in _my_ class.”

Shirabu turns to Eita, eyes blazing – and if meeting his eyes before was like staring at direct sunlight, now it’s like staring at a comet blazing to earth from millions of kilometers away.  “What do you mean, nobody in that war –”

“I mean, our country is fucking disgusting!” Eita interrupts.  This time, he’s not going to back down. “Our country and everyone in it, from top executives to foot soldiers.  It doesn’t _matter_ whether they thought they were right or thought they had national pride or –”

“Or if they were providing for their families?  If they died even though they weren’t supposed to be soldiers?  If they –”

“It doesn’t matter!  They’re all disgusting!”

Shirabu gets very quiet.  Eita can hear shouting from the yard outside.  And then, the kid says, as calmly as an elementary school teacher explaining simple addition, “My father was not disgusting.”

“He was, it doesn’t ma –” Eita starts to say.

But Shirabu cuts him off.  “ _He was not disgusting._  He was a good man who died building ships for a country that didn’t give a _shit_ about him.  For a company that didn’t even pay for his fucking funeral.  For a man who committed suicide because he couldn’t own up to his own shitty decisions –”

“Your father was part of a destructive system!” Eita yells.  It’s taking all of his self-control not to stand up and smack this kid right in his smug, completely _wrong_ face.  “He had to go for the system to change!  Everyone from that generation has to go, it doesn’t matter who they are or what they did!”

“That’s easy for you to say, _rich boy,_ ” Shirabu spits back.  “Sitting there in your silk shirt like the war didn’t even _affect you_ –”

“Why do you think I’m in this provincial dump?”  Eita’s standing now.  He’s not sure when that happened.  And Shirabu’s standing, too – he’s a full head shorter, but his eyes burn like someone lit a thousand kilos of dynamite behind them.  “Why do you think I’m sitting in this fucking office?  Why do you think I’m talking to _you_?  Because it fucking _affected me_!  My father killed himself, sliced himself right open on his antique steel sword because he knew the shipbuilding business was better off without him –”

“What was your father’s name?” Shirabu asks.  Deathly quiet.

“What?”

“What.  Was.  Your.  Father’s.   _Name_?”

Eita looks into this kid’s eyes, and it’s like looking into an exploding star.

“Semi Ito,” he says.  “But I don’t under –”

Shirabu slams a fist into his face before he can finish the sentence.  Eita opens his mouth to yell, closes his fingers into a fist of his own, and Shirabu’s gearing up to go another round – when the principal steps out of his office and pulls the kid back, holding him up by the arms, even as he kicks wildly.  Eita falls back against his chair – _his_ chair, in the middle of the row.

“This was a very poor decision,” Yamaida-sensei says.  Eita starts to stick his tongue out at the other boy, but then the principal adds, “For you _both._ ”

Shirabu is dragged into the office, still kicking.  “This isn’t over,” he snarls at Eita.  And Eita believes him.

 

Kenjirou is sentenced to two hours of bathroom-cleaning duty, every day after school for a week.

He's okay with that, honestly.  He’s cleaned bathrooms before – his own, and his parents’, and sometimes the ones in the factory, when the foreman had no other tasks for him to help out with.  He doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty, or helping keep his school clean.  He doesn’t even mind the cold toilet water that always feels vaguely slimy when he sinks his hands into it to scrub.  But what he does mind – what he does, _very much_ mind – is the fact that that _stuck-up prick_ Semi Eita has the same punishment.

“I can’t believe they’re making us do this,” Semi says, staring at a toilet as though a spirit is about to reach up and drag him inside.  (Kenjirou can only wish.)

Kenjirou tries to ignore him, focusing on scrubbing the sink.  The more productive he is, the faster this will go.  Hopefully.

“I mean,” Semi goes on, “I get that these provincial schools don’t have janitors or whatever, but it’s ridiculous for them to expect us to do this every day for a whole _week._  We’re students, not _servants._ ”

Kenjirou wonders if, if he just ignores Semi, he’ll stop talking.  If he’ll let Kenjirou do his part in peace.  He scrubs at the sink a few more times, then moves on to the counter.

“ _I mean._ ”  No, Kenjirou wouldn’t be so lucky.  “I don’t understand what we did to deserve this.  Were we disrespectful?  Maybe.  Fighting?  A little.  But you started it.  And I’m still not sure why.  All I did was mention my father …”

Kenjirou is just destined to have his patience tried today, apparently.  He wasn’t expecting this when he and his mother moved in with her brother.  He thought he’d go to a new school, make new friends, and move on – but instead he has to deal with this _asshole_ , who thinks that he’s some kind of _expert_ on the war even though he has no idea what sacrifice really means.

“ _Your father_ ,” Kenjirou says slowly, not looking up from the counter he’s washing, “was the head of the company that _my father_ worked for.   _My father_ died in an accident at his factory.   _Your father_ gave my family nothing.  No benefits.  No payments.  Not even money for the funeral.”

Something drops – Semi’s sponge, falling onto the tiles of the bathroom floor.  It lands with a soft _squelch._  Kenjirou still doesn’t look up.

“I’m sorry,” Semi says.  His voice is quiet – as though he’s trying to be sympathetic.

Kenjirou doesn’t answer.  For a few minutes, the bathroom is silent, save for the faint splashing of water and the occasional running of faucets.  Kenjirou finishes scrubbing the counter and moves on to one of the toilets, on the far right side of the row.

“I hated him too, y’know.”

 _This_ makes Kenjirou look up – more out of surprise than anything else.  Semi is staring at the toilet beneath him, as though searching for an answer in its shallow bowl.

“I did,” Semi goes on.  “I hated him.  He talked this big talk about how his company was doing work that would benefit the whole country, but he seemed to care about _the whole country_ more than he ever cared about me, or my mom.  Or maybe it was about the money.  I don’t know.  When he died, I thought, good riddance – with him and people like him getting out of the way, people like me can take over and _actually_ run things for the good of the whole country, and for the good of the people in it.”

“Okay,” Kenjirou says.  He tries to imagine it, what it would be like to live with the kind of person who would see twenty people die in an accident in one of his factories and not even send their families flowers.  He lost his father, he thinks, but at least he had a good father.

“Okay,” Kenjirou says again.  “But … not everyone in that generation was terrible.”

“Maybe not,” Semi replies.  “Now, can you help me clean this toilet?  I have no idea what I’m supposed to do, and I think it’s trying to drown me.”

Kenjirou thinks that that’s as good as an apology as he’s going to get, and goes to help the other boy out.  (And if he tells Semi that he needs to submerge his arms in toilet water all the way up to the elbows or he’ll anger the sewage kami, well, nobody needs to know.)

 

 

_November 10, 1945_

The textbook is heavy in Taichi’s arms.

It feels like a ton of bricks, or one of the large stones at the bottom of the brook that runs behind his house.  Taichi tried to pick one of those stones up once, when he was younger, and found his arms sinking into the water before he could lift the rock even a scant few centimeters.  His father had laughed at him, told him it’s better to leave the stones as they are, better not to fight what nature had planned.

This book is heavy as one of those stones, but he can lift it, by himself.  He can rest it on his bent knees and turn the pages every few seconds, flipping through Acupuncture and Herbal Remedies into Anatomy and Bedside Manner.  The book’s cover has long faded, but he knows its title by heart: “Guide for the Modern Western Physician.”  It was his father’s first textbook in medical school, and he swore by it for all of his career – until he was called to the front to fulfill his duty to his country.

Taichi remembers the day his father left.  It was a spring day, sunny, with just a hint of breeze.  Taichi had come running out to the car with the book held tight, feeling as though his arms were about to fall off, only to hear his father say, “No, I can’t take that with me.  It’s too big and heavy.”

Taichi’s mouth had opened in a round O, like a koi fish in a pond.  “But then how will you know what to do if someone gets a cold?  Or starts to throw up?  Or has an infected cut?  Or –”

“I’ll know what to do,” his father had said, “because it’s all in here.”  He tapped his temple, smiling.  “You keep the book, son.  Read through it enough times, and you might not even have to go to school like your old man.”

Taichi reads through the book now – all the pages he’s ripped, corners he’s earmarked, lines he’s memorized.  How to treat colds, and stomach bugs, and infections.  Eastern medicine and Western medicine and combinations of the two.  And all of it filled with his father’s neat handwriting, circles and notations and doodles in the margins from when he was bored in class twenty years ago.

The doodles are Taichi’s favorite.  Some of them are of sick people or medical remedies, but most of them are flowers – carnations and violets and morning glories, all intricately sketched in blue ink.  Flowers that filled the garden of their front yard, brightening the days of everyone who passed by their house.

Taichi’s mother left two months after his father.  She went – not to fight or to heal but to write, to document both the heroes of the war and the men who were only trying to stay alive, war for them just another means of providing for their families.  “If I don’t tell their stories, who will?” she asked.  And Taichi was unable to answer as she packed up her notebook and her diamond ring, as she left him with his grandmother and a garden that seemed smaller every day.

“Look after the flowers,” she told him.  “Make sure the garden is blooming when I get back.”

Taichi shines his flashlight into the corner of his room opposite the door – where a small cardboard box sits, full of carnations and violets and morning glories.  All that’s left of his parents’ garden.

His grandmother said they didn’t have room for much on the train.  He could bring one bag, one box, and one book.  Taichi nodded silently, then fit his clothes into a backpack and his flowers into a box.  She scolded him for that, said the train wouldn’t tolerate the dirt, said the book was too heavy, said shouldn’t you just take some toys – but they’d allowed him on the train with his flowers.  They’d let him take up two seats, one for him and one for the box.  The other passengers had smiled at him as they passed – tired smiles, but smiles nonetheless.

Taichi flips through a few more pages.  Infection, gangrene, malaria.  He wonders – not for the first time – if bringing this book with him would’ve helped his father come home safe.  If, maybe, he forgot the correct treatment at a critical moment.  If he lost hope, or faith.  If he ran out of margins in which to doodle flowers.

Taichi closes the book and places it on the night table.  Turns off his flashlight.  Burrows down beneath his covers.  Tries to think only of flowers and bright things, not of malaria or infections or failure.

 _Tomorrow_ , he tells the flowers in the corner.   _Tomorrow, I’ll find you a new home._

 

 

_November 11, 1945_

There’s a stranger in Satori’s garden.

Well, it isn’t _his_ garden – it’s his aunt’s, just like the house he’s staying in and the food he eats for dinner and the money he uses to pay school fees, as she keeps reminding him.  The grass in the front yard is hers, and the bed of flowers by the mailbox is hers, and the magnolia tree stretching lazily towards the sun is hers – but the boy sitting beneath the tree is someone else’s.  Satori has never seen him before.

Satori approaches the boy slowly, the same way he might approach a deer standing by the side of a road running through the middle of a forest.  He doesn’t want to scare this boy – he looks so delicate, with his light hair and his pale skin, glinting in the late afternoon sunlight.

As Satori gets closer, he can see that the boy’s hands are covered in dirt – caked under his fingernails, smeared across his palms, halfway up to his elbows.  He’s sitting cross-legged next to a small hole in the ground.  And behind him is a cardboard box – full of carnations and violets and morning glories and so many other flowers that Satori doesn’t know the names of.

He’s sitting, not moving.  But after another few steps, Satori can see why.  The boy’s eyes are red, and his cheeks are wet – as though he’s been crying.

Satori sits down in the dirt next to the boy.  Looks at him, and at the hole in the ground, and at the flowers.

The boy doesn’t seem particularly startled by Satori’s presence – he just takes a shaky breath and says, “The dirt looked good over here.”

He has to pause to sniffle.  Satori rummages in his jacket pocket, pulls out an old napkin from lunch at school that day, and hands it to the boy.

He takes it gratefully, blows his nose, then continues, “Most of the yard is all grass.  No good.  And my aunt’s yard is all old and torn up.  No good.  But under here is good.  I thought I could put the flowers here.  I thought it would be a good place.  But I don’t have a shovel, or – or a trowel, or – or anything.  I don’t know how to do this on my own –”

Satori holds out one hand.  Puts it over the boy’s mouth.  He shouldn’t be crying, Satori thinks.  He looks like a nice person, and nice people shouldn’t cry.  Not when there are easy solutions to their problems.

Satori stands up.  He points at the ground, looking pointedly at the boy – _stay here._  The boy nods, and Satori runs off toward a solution as quickly as he can.

He returns in fifteen minutes with Ushijima, Oohira, and all of Ushijima’s gardening equipment.  The three of them find the boy still sitting cross-legged beneath the magnolia tree, his eyes decidedly drier than before.  They sit down around him, and Satori takes a moment to be thankful that his aunt hasn’t come home from work yet.

“Hi.  I’m Oohira Reon,” Oohira says, smiling kindly as only Oohira can.  He offers his hand, and after staring at it for a second, the boy shakes it – dirt and all.

“I’m Ushijima,” Ushijima says, “and that’s Tendou.”  Satori gives a small wave.  “Tendou told us you were trying to plant some flowers?”

The boy nods and points at the box.  Carnations and violets and morning glories sway back and forth in the light breeze.  “They’re from my parents’ garden.  I wanted to plant them somewhere here.  Oh – and I’m Kawanishi.  Kawanishi Taichi.”

“Kawanishi, where do you live?” Oohira asks.

Kawanishi points at the house next door to Satori’s.  Satori thought the only person living there was a widow, around the same age as his aunt – he hadn’t realized anyone else had moved in.

“It’s my aunt’s house.  I moved in there with my grandmother yesterday,” Kawanishi explains.  “But I can’t plant these flowers there – the soil is too barren.”

“But we can’t mess up Tendou-san’s nice yard,” Oohira says.  All four boys gaze across to the yard next to this one.  It’s a tragic sight – all cracking dirt and dry crabgrass, as though an infantry regiment roared through and destroyed all the vegetation.  It seems impossible that anything would be able to grow there.

And then, Ushijima says, “Barren soil will never yield any fruit.”

Oohira stares at him, as though to ask why he’s stating the obvious.  But Ushijima isn’t done.

“But that soil isn’t barren,” he continues.  “It still has grass growing.  There’s sunlight.  And nutrients below the soil.  It will take some work, but we can do it.”

“Really?” Kawanishi asks.

Ushijima gives him a long look – one that Satori has come to realize means he knows exactly what he’s talking about and would prefer not to be questioned.

Satori jumps to his feet.  Reon quickly joins him.

The three of them turn and look at Kawanishi – still sitting in the dirt, his mouth hanging open as though he’s never heard of _friends_ before.

“You would all do that … for me?” he asks in a small voice.

“Bringing a patch of earth back to life is a worthy task,” Ushijima says.  But Satori knows that he means, _Of course we would._

And so, without another word, they set to work.  Kawanishi and Satori grab rakes and tear up all the old grass, taking out the top layer of dirt to make way for the moist, rich soil underneath.  Oohira helps Ushijima carry bags of compost from his house to Kawanishi’s.  And partway through the afternoon, Semi comes strolling by, followed a few minutes later by Shirabu on his old bike – Ushijima sets both of them to work spreading compost.  Ushijima even brings enough grass seed from his house to cover the yard.

By the time the sun is sinking into a horizon as violet as some of Kawanishi’s flowers, the yard has been entirely transformed – planted with seed and flowers and hope.  The boys start to disperse towards their homes, muscles satisfyingly sore with a good day’s work – but as Satori turns to go into his aunt’s house, he feels a pull on the back of his shirt.

He turns around to find Kawanishi standing behind him, rubbing his hand on the back of his head.  Standing up, the kid is all lines and angles, gangly limbs he has yet to grow into.  He looks like a stick insect, robbed of its natural habitat – and, honestly, he’s about as bony as one.

Satori tilts his head in a wordless question, and Kawanishi says, “Thank you.”

Satori stares inquisitively.  He wasn’t the only one who helped seed the lawn, and he wasn’t even the one with the idea, so why –

“You were the first to help,” Kawanishi explains.  “And now, because of you, well –”  He gestures at his flowers, now standing proudly in one corner of his aunt's yard.  “So, yeah.  Thanks.”  He shrugs, awkward – apparently he’s run out of words to say.

Satori takes a couple of steps closer – close enough that he can pat Kawanishi on the shoulder.  “My pleasure,” he says.

And with that, he turns and returns to his aunt’s house.  It occurs to him as he’s going inside that she won’t be pleased that he’s spent the afternoon in the dirt and hasn’t done any homework yet – but he thinks, as he glances back at the newly replanted yard next to his, that this was worth it.

 

 

_November 30, 1945_

“How come we only ever play catch?” Shirabu asks, one day after school while Reon is (yet again) fishing the ball out of the bushes near the side of the school after Ushijima (yet again) over-estimated someone’s catching ability.

“What d’you mean, how come we only ever play catch?” Yamagata replies.  “What’s wrong with catch?”

“Nothing’s _wrong_ with it,” Shirabu replies.  He stalks forward from the side of the school, bending his knees and focusing his gaze, so that he’ll be ready to catch when Reon next tosses.  “It’s just that it’s all we do.  Don’t you guys get bored?”

“I like catch,” Ushijima says.

Shirabu rolls his eyes.  “Of course you do, you’re great at it.  But, I mean – you throw the ball, you catch the ball.  You throw the ball, you catch the ball.  It’s tedious as hell.”

“What else would you suggest we play, Shirabu?” Reon asks, emerging from the bushes with the ball in hand.  He tosses it overhand to Shirabu, who catches it easily.

“I don’t know.  Anything,” Shirabu answers, throwing to Kawanishi.

“Hide and seek?” Kawanishi suggests.

Yamagata snorts.  “Where would we hide?  Behind the playground?  Around the corner of the school?”

“Okay, what about tag?” Shirabu says.

“I thought tag was for children,” Ushijima tells him.

The ball passes to Yamagata, to Shirabu, to Tendou, then back to Ushijima, who hurls it at Reon.  Reon manages to catch it this time – two-handed, just above his head.  Now that Shirabu mentions it, he does see the appeal of playing a different game – there has to be _something_ Ushijima isn’t unbelievably skilled at.

But before the debate can continue, Semi races out of the school, ripe from his most recent weekly meeting with the principal.

“Guys!” he shouts.  “Guys guys guys guys  _guys_!”

“What what what what  _what_?” Shirabu echoes mockingly.

“There’s gonna be –”  Semi stops in front of the group, bends over as he catches his breath, then goes on, “a new student.  In class 1-A.”

“What’s so special about that?” Yamagata asks. “We get new students all the time.”

Semi glares at him.  “You didn’t hear the best part yet – listen to this.  This new student.  This kid.  Is the son of an _admiral._ ”

“The son of an _admiral_?” Reon repeats.  “At our school?”

Semi nods.  “I overheard the secretary talking to the principal about it.  The bigshot’s going on trial for war crimes, so his wife and kid are moving here, and the kid’s gonna be _at our school._  I wonder how much he knows – or if he has any inside information about what’s happening?  The government’s been so quiet, y’know, and –”

“Don’t interrogate him, Semi,” Reon warns.

“I’m not going to _interrogate him,_ ” Semi says indignantly.  “I’m just going to ask him a few questions.”

“Be careful,” Ushijima says.  Tendou nods in agreement.

“I just think it’d be interesting,” Semi says.  He steps into the space between Yamagata and Shirabu, neatly inserting himself into the rotation of throwing and catching.

“It _would_ be interesting,” Shirabu agrees.  “But stop asking questions if he gets uncomfortable.”

“Yeah, I know, I know.”  Semi catches the ball, tosses it lightly to Tendou.  “Also, hey, did any of you guys get what the physics homework is?  Because I stopped paying attention the second Kinomori-sensei started talking about vectors …”

 

 

_December 4, 1945_

Tsutomu watches the rain.

It’s pouring down in buckets, loud and fast and harsh, as though the entire world is taking a cold shower.  He can barely see the street through all the water, painting everything over with heavy gray brush strokes.  And the rain is loud, louder than drums or cars, loud the way he remembers the air raids he used to have to hide from in the basement of his father’s house, always shushed when he asked if he could go back upstairs.

Tsutomu wants to go outside and play in the rain.  He thinks it would be fun – he could jump in the puddles, dance beneath the downpour, tilt his head back and try to catch the water in his mouth.  He’d be completely soaked, of course, and his hair would get all plastered to his head, and he’d get mud all over his boots, but then he’d get to take a warm bath and wash everything off, and then maybe sit in his towel while his mother read him a bedtime story.

He wants to go outside, but he knows better than to ask.  His mother and grandmother are having one of their Very Important Conversations that he is not allowed to interrupt for any reason.  They’ve been having a lot of those conversations recently.  Especially since his father disappeared.

Tsutomu listens closely, trying to focus on the words behind him instead of the rain before him.  He can catch pieces.

“… can’t tell him,” his mother is saying.  “He’s too young.  He won’t understand.”

“Then we have to explain it until he understands,” his grandmother replies.  “Sana, his father was –”  A clap of thunder reverberates across the sky, drowning out her next words.  “We must tell him.”

“He’s my son, and I decide whether or not we tell him!”  His mother’s voice is louder, now – more high pitched.  Hysterical.  His father used to say that none of her words had any value when her voice sounded like that.

“Okay, fine,” his grandmother concedes, sounding tired.  “But you can’t keep pretending this isn’t happening for much longer.”

His mother starts to answer, but before she can get more than a couple of words out, his grandmother leaves.  The slam of the door shutting behind her is louder than a clap of thunder.

Tsutomu goes back to watching the rain.  He pretends that he’s outside, jumping in the puddles and dancing beneath the downpour and tilting his head back to catch the water in his mouth.  He pretends that his father is there with him, laughing and smiling and picking him up to swing him around, not frowning and yelling the way he did when his men began losing.  He pretends he knows where his father is.

He pretends his father is coming back.

 

 

_December 10, 1945_

On his way to school the next morning, Reon is hit by a small torpedo.

Or, to be more accurate, not a torpedo – a _boy._  A boy with a crop of dark hair, sky-blue eyes, and legs going a million kilometers an hour.  He’s got a Hinode Junior High uniform hanging off his skinny form and determined expression on his pinched face, and he barrels into Reon as though Reon is a door he’s trying to plow through.

Or perhaps, Reon thinks, as the boy takes a couple of stumbling steps back and peers up at him dazedly, he didn’t see Reon walking there at all.

“Hello there,” Reon says.  “I’m Oohira Reon.  And who might you be?”

Reon holds out a hand to shake – but the boy doesn’t take it.  Instead, he snaps to attention, as though Reon is his commanding officer and it’s time for an inspection.

“Goshiki Tsutomu!” the boy – Goshiki – exclaims.  “New transfer student!  Class 1-A!  I like eating fish, solving puzzles, and playing volleyball!  And I’m going to be the first one to school today!”

His announcement apparently over, Goshiki takes off again, his bowl cut bouncing down the road like a racecar zooming to the finish line.  It’s not until he’s been out of sight for almost half a minute that Reon thinks to shout after him:

“The school is the other way!”


	2. act two: cultivation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another shoutout to [becky](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis) is necessary. i torment her, but this fic would be a shadow of its current self without her beta-ing. i also have to thank [megan](https://twitter.com/ohirareon) for some last-minute help with editing!
> 
> i was honored to work with [kat](http://tendouaf.tumblr.com/) on this fic for the big bang; i linked [her beautiful art](http://tendouaf.tumblr.com/post/149894478736/this-is-my-art-for-hqbb-2016-for-owlinaminors) at the end of the last chapter, but i'm linking it again here. because it's just that good. and megan has done some art for the fic as well: [reon (from act one)](https://ohirareon.tumblr.com/post/149897358509/i-love-reon-and-i-love-reons-character-arc-in), [semi and shirabu in akira-esque jackets & goshiki being the tallest person in the world](https://ohirareon.tumblr.com/post/150200459949/more-shiratorizawa-for-owlinaminors-wild-ride-of). check it out!!
> 
> tw for trauma. in particular: in the first segment of the "June 12, 1946" scene, one character has an intense flashback/ptsd experience.

> _They learn that the social unit is larger than the individual unit, that individual victory is not as sweet as the victory of the team, and that the most perfect self-realization is won by the most perfect sinking of one's self in the welfare of the larger unit - the team._
> 
> _– Luther Halsey Gulick ([mentor of the inventor of volleyball](http://search.proquest.com/docview/1517984473?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=10226)), 1907 _

 

_December 10, 1945_

“He likes to play volleyball.”

“Wait, you – you met him?  You _talked_ to him?”  Semi stares at Reon as though he just solved an equation before Semi could and showed off to the class.  (Which is, for the record, about as likely as Reon spontaneously combusting in the middle of a lecture.)

Reon nods.  “Yeah, I ran into him on my way to school this morning.  Or – he ran into me.  His name’s Goshiki, and he’s a new transfer student in class 1-A.  It has to be the admiral’s kid, right?”

“It must be,” Yamagata agrees.

The group of them – Ushijima, Tendou, Reon, Semi, Yamagata, Kawanishi, and Shirabu – is sitting in the abandoned classroom at the end of the hallway, their backs up against the wall by the door, eating lunch.  This was originally Ushijima’s quiet place, then his and Tendou’s, and then the whole group’s.  There’s nothing particularly special about the room – all it has inside is a dusty chalkboard and a pile of old chairs in the corner – but it’s separated from the rest of the school.  Reon’s never seen anyone else come into this room in the couple of months he’s been eating lunch here.  The war slogans that once covered the old chalkboard have been erased, replaced by Tendou’s doodles, Kawanishi’s scientific diagrams, Semi’s math notes.  They use this classroom to go over homework, and to argue, and to talk about topics their teachers wouldn’t approve of.  The room is private.  It’s theirs.

“But what did he _say_ ?” Semi presses, his bento forgotten at his feet.  “What _exactly_?”

Reon shrugs.  “Not much in particular.  His name’s Goshiki something, he’s new here, class 1-A, he likes eating fish and solving puzzles and volleyball.  And then he said something about wanting to be the first one at school this morning and ran off.”

“Volleyball,” Shirabu repeats.  “What is that?”

“It must be a game he made up,” Semi says, dismissive.  “There is no such thing.”

“I don’t know.”  Kawanishi sits up further, chewing his onigiri contemplatively.  “If he really is the admiral’s kid, maybe he knows about more stuff that we don’t – games from other countries, maybe.”

“I’ve never heard of volleyball,” Ushijima contributes.

“I still say he made it up,” Semi announces.

“But then why would that be one of the first things he said?” Reon wonders.  “And anyway, I don’t see why we should just be calling him ‘the admiral’s kid’ - he has his own name, I don’t think he’d want to be reminded of his dad all the time -”

“Yeah,” Yamagata says.  “He’s a first-year.  He’s not, like, _five._ ”

“ _Who’s_ not five?”

All of their heads turn in synchronized shock, to stare at the doorway of the classroom.  Reon’s never seen anyone else come into this room into the couple of months he’s been eating lunch here – except that now, there’s a kid standing there.  A kid with a black bowl cut, a pinched face, and wide, blue eyes, watching them carefully.

“ _Who’s_ not five?” Goshiki Tsutomu repeats.

“Um, a new kid in class 1-A,” Yamagata says.

Reon tries to motion at Goshiki to indicate that _this_ is the new kid, he’s _right here,_ he’s literally _standing in the doorway_ , but none of his friends pay attention to him.

“A new kid in class 1-A?” Goshiki asks, wide-eyed and innocent as a baby swan.  “Is there another one?”

“Another one?” Semi repeats.

“Yeah, ‘cause _I’m_ new in class 1-A!  Who’s the other new kid?  I want to meet them!  We could be friends!”

And _now_ everyone turns to Reon.

“Hello again, Goshiki,” Reon says.  “How’s your first day of school been so far?”

“Great!” Goshiki exclaims.  “I didn’t get here first – I kinda got lost – but I will tomorrow!  And my teacher is cool, and my class has a lot of fun people – I’ve never been in a _class_ before, I’ve always just had tutors – and everyone is super friendly and nice, and the school has so many rooms, and some of them have people in them!”

Semi starts to ask something, but Reon shoots him a look and he closes his mouth, grabs a boiled egg from his lunch instead.

“That all sounds great, Goshiki,” Kawanishi says.

Goshiki nods – his head bobs up and down like a puppet on a string.  “It is!  I’m super excited to be here!  But who was that other kid you were talking about – the one who’s new?  I want to meet them!”

“There’s no other new kid,” Yamagata tells him.  “We were talking about you.”  His clarification made, Yamagata turns to his lunch – he has, by Reon’s estimation, a literally bottomless lunchbox capable of holding enough food for ten people.

 _“Me?”_  Goshiki stares from person to person, confusion clear in his sky-blue eyes.   “Why?”

Kawanishi looks at Reon.  Shirabu looks at Semi.  Reon looks at Tendou.  Tendou looks at Semi.  Semi looks at the chalkboard, as though years-old patriotic slogans will help them with this situation at all.

“Oohira said that you like volleyball,” Ushijima tells Goshiki.  “I’ve never heard of volleyball.”

“Oh!  You want to know about volleyball?”  Goshiki perks up, like a puppy that’s just been let out to go on a walk.

Everyone looks at Reon.  Reon looks at Ushijima.  Ushijima is staring intensely at Goshiki.

Reon shrugs.  Apparently, they want to know about volleyball.

“Volleyball is only the _best game ever invented,_ ” Goshiki says.  He plops down between Ushijima and Tendou, takes out a paper bag, and pulls out a container of edamame, which he starts munching as he talks.  “You get seven players, right – well, usually seven, it can be less – and a foam ball, and a net, about …”  He points at the middle of the chalkboard.  “ _That_ high.  There are two teams, one on either side of the net, and they compete to see who can get more points.  You get points by hitting the ball to the other side – if it touches the ground on their side, that’s a point to you.  There’s all this fast hitting – they call it _spiking_ – like _this!”_  Goshiki demonstrates by flailing his right arm in the air, nearly hitting Tendou in the process.  “And bumping, like _this!”_  Goshiki puts his hands together in a fist out in front of him and hits up, sending edamame flying across the room.  “And setting, and serving, and jumping high up – it all looks _super cool!”_

Reon glances around at the rest of the upperclassmen.  Tendou has moved closer to Goshiki so as to hear him better, Semi has one eyebrow raised, Yamagata has taken out a bag of chips, Shirabu is muttering something about _annoying talkative kids_ , Kawanishi seems on the verge of a yawn, and Ushijima – well, Ushijima is as hard to read as ever.

“Oh.  Okay.”  Goshiki deflates, losing wind like a fighter plane experiencing engine failure.  “You aren’t that interested, are you?”

Tendou shakes his head emphatically, and motions for the kid to keep talking.

“What?” Goshiki asks.  “I don’t get it.”

“Tendou doesn’t talk,” Ushijima explains.

“Oh.”  Goshiki abandons his edamame to peer at Tendou, sky-blue eyes wide and curious.  Reon stills, Semi tenses, and Yamagata looks up from his lunchbox.  For a moment, the entire room seems to hold its breath.

And then, Goshiki says.  “Okay.  So the coolest thing about volleyball is how everyone on a team moves together.  They’re so fast, but so in synch, working together to outsmart the other team …”

Reon breathes a sigh of relief, Ushijima half-smiles (Reon adds this to his mental list of times he’s seen Ushijima smile - this marks five), and even Semi seems to relax, as much as he can ever relax – like a pufferfish returning to its normal size.

Goshiki keeps talking to them about volleyball – this game he discovered, or invented, or maybe saw in a dream, for all Reon knows – until the end of lunch.  Reon has to admit that, if the game really existed, it would be kind-of incredible – working with a team, coming up with plays in a split second, battling in midair.  It would be much more exciting than catch, at least.

When the bell rings, Goshiki jumps to his feet and gathers up his paper bag, now slightly mangled.  But before he leaves, he turns back to the group of boys and says:

“If you don’t believe me about how cool volleyball is, I can show you!”

“Show us?” Kawanishi repeats.

“How?” Reon asks.  Is Goshiki going to play a game supposedly meant for eight people all by himself?

“I have slides!  Projector slides of games!  In my bag!” Goshiki replies, practically bouncing up and down.  “Except – oh no.”  His face falls, and Reon is suddenly struck by a strange desire to find out exactly what’s wrong and fix it immediately.  “My new house doesn’t have a projector.”

For a moment, the group is silent.

And then, Ushijima says, “Semi’s uncle has a projector.”

Seven pairs of eyes turn at once to stare at Semi.

Semi mutters something along the lines of, “I can’t believe he remembered that,” then says, louder, “Yes, he does.”

“Meet us outside after school,” Ushijima announces.  “We’ll go to Semi’s uncle’s house and watch volleyball.”

Goshiki jumps and whoops so loudly, Reon thinks the whole school must be able to hear him.

 

“I still say he invented it.”

Eita is leading the group to his uncle’s house after school – they trail behind him like a bunch of ducklings following their mother, except for Shirabu, who’s keeping pace with him, mocking him for the fact that his house has a _slide projector_ what even _is that._  The sun stares down from directly overhead, causing Eita to sweat through his jacket despite the chilly December air.  And the road is empty as ever - the houses and run-down they pass might as well be occupied by ghosts.

It’s weird, going home this early.  Eita’s grown used to staying after school for hours, tossing the ball back and forth, talking about the most recent news headlines, and generally avoiding their homework.  But now, he’s been volunteered to open up his house (or, his uncle’s house) to seven other people, all because this overenergetic kid claims to have slides of a game that’s supposedly _better than anything ever._ Eita doesn’t like it, but Oohira says he needs to “work on his patience” and this is as good practice for that as he’s ever going to get.  He’s lucky his uncle isn’t at home today.

“If he made it up, how would he have slides of it?” Shirabu asks.  “C’mon, Semi, get your head out of your ass.”

Eita bristles, ready to list in detail all of the ways his head is very far from his ass, thank you very much – then remembers _patience,_ and strides on ahead in silence.  Shirabu laughs at him, not trying to keep up.

They arrive at Eita’s uncle’s house soon enough.  It’s a small place, green wood frame with a traditional tile roof, set off from the road by a yard overrun with weeds and dry grass.  Eita knows Ushijima wants to tear the whole thing down and replant it – he asked if he could, once, the afternoon they planted Kawanishi’s garden, and Eita said no.  His father’s house had a garden maintained by professionals, planted with the most expensive European flowers, designed to impress potential clients – Eita likes his uncle’s yard better.  Maybe Ushijima would be able to bring it new life or whatever, the same way he did for Kawanishi’s yard, but Eita doesn’t think that would be worth the effort.

The inside of the house isn’t much cleaner – the floor is littered with food containers, the sink stacked full of dirty dishes, the shelves gathering dust.  Eita’s aunt died years ago and his only cousin hasn’t been home since she got married, so the house has been a mess since long before Eita arrived.  And it’s not like Eita could help clean - at his father’s house, there were always servants for that.  His uncle pays a maid to come once a week, but other than that, the place remains a bastion of bachelorhood.  It usually starts to smell funny about halfway through the week, but, well.  Eita’s uncle has a slide projector.

The group picks their way through haphazardly organized chairs and toppling stacks of newspapers to the common room.  Eita clears an old coat and a couple of ratty blankets off the couch, then drags in the tatami mat from his room so that they can all sit.

“This is nice,” Oohira says politely.

“I think I need a facemask,” Yamagata remarks.

Ushijima reaches under himself and pulls out a rotten apple from the back of the couch.  (The chances of it having been there since before the war are … disturbingly high.)

Eita just scowls at the lot of them.  “Look, do you want to see this volleyball thing or what?”

He gets no response.

Eita smirks.  “I thought so.”  He closes the curtains, turns on the projector, and fiddles with the dials.  (He’s never actually used this himself before – it’s mostly something his uncle uses to work from home – but nobody needs to know that.)

“So.  Kid.”  Eita turns to look at Goshiki – who is, apparently, too excited to sit like a normal person, and is currently bouncing in place next to the couch.  “Your slides?”

“Oh!  Yeah!”  Goshiki rummages through his knapsack, then holds out an envelope labeled, _COOLEST GAME #8._

“Number eight?” Eita wonders aloud as he opens the envelope.

“Yeah.”  Goshiki nods.  “I labeled this one game _COOLEST GAME_ because it was the coolest game, but then another game was just as cool as that one, maybe even cooler, so I labeled it _COOLEST GAME NUMBER TWO,_ but then _another_ game –”

“How many are there, total?” Oohira asks.

“Fifteen!” Goshiki says proudly.

Eita scoffs, then turns around.  He examines the projector – he put in the slide, but it’s not projecting anything.  He flicks a couple of switches, turns a knob, but still, nothing happens.

“Sure you know what you’re doing there?” Yamagata asks.

“I have it all under control,” Eita informs him.  “The slides should show up right –” he flips the biggest, most important-looking switch he can find – “ _now_.”

The room remains dark.

“Some expert _you_ are,” Shirabu says, snickering.

“I never claimed to be an _expert-”_

“ _Oh, I’m Semi, I’m so cool, my uncle has a slide projector, except I don’t know how to use it –_ ”

“Shirabu, be nice,” Oohira chides him.

Shirabu just barks another laugh, leaning back in the couch.

But before Eita can actually move to slap him, Kawanishi gets up.  He unfolds himself quietly, steps forward from the tatami mat, and bends to examine the projector.  A couple seconds pass, Kawanishi fiddles with a lever, and then, suddenly, the screen is lit up by a black and white picture.

The rest of the team goes quiet.  Eita, with a truly impressive amount of willpower,  is able to stop his mouth from dropping open.

“Did you know he could do that?” Oohira asks Tendou.  Tendou shrugs.

Eita wants to know where Kawanishi learned to use a projector, too – but when he looks at the picture now projected onto the back wall of his uncle’s house, he forgets his question.

The picture shows a group of men in white T-shirts and shorts – young men, probably not older than twenty – on a square court of cement at the back of a compound, divided in half by a rope net strung up between two poles.  There are six of them on each side, and none of them are looking at the camera.  All of them – all twelve of them – are in action, all running or yelling or raising their arms, some of them all three.  On one side, three of them are jumping at the net, arms extended all the way above their heads, reaching towards the ball – or trying to stop the ball.

And on the other side, one man is flying.

Well, he’s not flying.  He couldn’t be flying.  But it _looks_ like he’s flying, as though he jumped up and took off, as though invisible wings sprouted from his back and are holding him in the air so that he can swing his hand down to the ball.  His face isn’t in focus, the camera’s too far away - but even from a distance, it’s clear that he is focused entirely on the ball.  As though his world has narrowed to this ball – this point – this win.

“This is volleyball,” Goshiki says.

And Eita – well, he doesn’t quite understand why Goshiki called this game the best sport ever invented, but he thinks he’s getting there.  He looks around the dark room and sees familiar expressions on his friends’ faces – shock, awe, want.

The room is silent.  Silent as a war zone, silent as a grave, silent as a womb.

“Show us more,” Eita says.  He doesn’t have to look around to know that the rest of his friends are watching the screen just as intensely as he is.

Goshiki complies.  He shows them different shots of this game, close-ups of different players, different angles of the court.  He shows them dives and jumps and blocks.  He shows them strong players and fast players and smart players.  And this game – this _volleyball_ – comes to life in Eita’s uncle’s common room, the images burning on Eita’s mind until he feels as though he could close his eyes and watch the whole thing start to finish like the most exciting dream he’s ever had.

Eita’s never been one for sports.  He slacked off in gym class at his old school, refused to go to the park with his nanny after age three, only ventured down to the river when his father went with him.  But something about _volleyball_ makes him want to jump up and run a thousand kilometers, just to stand on one of those courts.

Something about volleyball – something about that look in that spiker’s eyes, his world narrowed to one ball, one point, one win.

Goshiki finishes flipping through his slides and stops on the first one.

“So, what do you think?” he asks, hands shaking with nervousness, blue eyes brimming with excitement.

“We need to play this game,” Ushijima says.  His voice is steady, but his hands are clenched into fists.  He seems ready for a fight - or ready to jump up and run a thousand kilometers, just to stand on a volleyball court.

And with that, the silence is broken – broken into a mess of exclamations and shouts, all agreeing with Ushijima that they need to play this game and they need to play it _now._  Eita feels tension he didn’t realize he was carrying drop from his shoulders - he’s not the only one who wants to stand on a volleyball court, wants to work towards something independent from school or a parent’s lost promises, wants to learn to fly.

Goshiki starts grinning so wide, Eita is legitimately afraid the kid’s face will break.

 

Tsutomu has never had friends before.

Sure, he’s had playmates – acquaintances, children of his father’s colleagues, shuffled in and out of the house in appropriate intervals depending on how their parents were faring in his father’s esteem.  He even met the Emperor’s son once.  But none of those kids ever wanted to _stay_ with Tsutomu, or wanted to see him again independent of political maneuverings.  They found him weird, or loud, or over-enthusiastic.

Maybe he would’ve learned to be a good friend if he ever went to school – but he only ever had tutors, old men and stiff-backed women who instructed him in the glorious history of the nation his father was helping build.  Maybe he would’ve learned – but instead, he spent his days alone in a too-big house full of artifacts he wasn’t allowed to touch, yelling and yelling in the hopes that someone would hear him.

Tsutomu has only had tutors and acquaintances and empty rooms, until now.  Now, he watches the group of boys around him, all talking animatedly as they pace up and down the street in front of the house.  The one whose house it is – Shirabu – says something, for which the blond, angry-looking one – Semi – teases him.  (Or is it the other way around?  Goshiki isn’t sure.)  Oohira chuckles at whatever it is, nudges the tall one – Ushijima.  Ushijima just shrugs.  After a few fascinated moments, Tsutomu realizes that they’re talking about where to play volleyball.  But it isn’t just one person ordering and the rest following – it’s a discussion, a debate.  It’s everyone talking at once, everyone disagreeing.  Tsutomu wonders if this – this cacophony of people around him – is what having friends feels like.

“We could find a spot along the mountain trail,” Ushijima is suggesting.

“No _way_ ,” Semi counters.  “There wouldn’t be enough space between the trees.  And nobody besides you wants to run all the way up there every day.”

“What about Tendou’s house?” the pale one – Kawameda? or Kawanishi? – asks.  “There’s a big yard there.”

Tendou shakes his head adamantly, and the conversation continues.

The shorter guy, with the weird sticking-up hair – Yama-something – turns to Tsutomu and says, “Do you have any ideas, Goshiki?  You’re the expert.”

“Yes!” Tsutomu exclaims.  Then, upon realizing he doesn’t actually have any ideas, he adds, “I mean, no!  I mean, maybe!  I mean … I just moved here, I don’t really know what there is.”

“Well, then, what do we _need_?” Shirabu demands.  “Tell us.”

And just like that, the whole group is looking at Tsutomu.  He doesn’t know any of them very well – he can barely remember all of their _names_ – but he still feels a strange sort of _responsibility_ towards them, as though he doesn’t want to let them down.  So, he thinks carefully, and then answers slowly:

“Well, we don’t need that much space, but the more we have, the more we can move around … So maybe something the size of the schoolyard.  And hard ground is better, so that it’s smooth, and you don’t slip.  Oh!  And we need something for a net, and some way to hang it …”

Oohira snaps his fingers.  “There’s an abandoned lot by my house.”

Tsutomu feels his mouth drop open, then quickly closes it – he just lost a tooth, and it’s really obvious in a really embarrassing way.

“The town was going to develop it into a park, or a playground, or something,” Oohira goes on, “but that was before the war, and now it’s just empty asphalt.  The buildings next to it are all empty, too – there’s an apartment building that all the people moved out of and what I think used to be a restaurant – so nobody would care if we hung a clothesline from a windowsill and tied it to a lamp post, or something.”

“That would be _perfect,_ ” Tsutomu says, almost reverently.  He can almost picture it – the net, the court, the _team_ \- like one of his slides, except three-dimensional, tangible, real.

He looks around and the others are all staring at Oohira, starry-eyed.  Shirabu looks like he’s prepared to punch someone, if that’s what it would take to bring their court into fruition.

“So then we just need … a ball and a net,” Tsutomu says.

Ushijima takes off his bag, opens it up, and pulls out a purple foam ball, about three times the size of his fist.  He holds it out in front of Tsutomu – who realizes, with a glint of glee, that he’s supposed to _inspect_ it.

Tsutomu narrows his eyes, peering at the ball.  He pokes it.  Rubs his finger along its surface.  Sniffs it a couple of times, for good measure.

“It’s not regulation, but it’ll do,” he announces.

“So now – a net, right?” Oohira says.

“Oh, that’s easy,” Semi replies.  “I can take a couple of clotheslines from my place – pretty sure my uncle hasn’t used one in years.”

“Great!  Semi, grab those, everyone get changed, and … meet in front of my place in fifteen?” Oohira asks.  Everyone nods, except for Yamagata, who looks pointedly at Oohira.  “You can change at my place,” he tells Yamagata.

The group scatters, leaving Tsutomu feeling a little bit like he’s just been hit on the head with a hammer.  He started this morning going to a new school, completely unsure of what to expect – and now he’s ending it playing volleyball, with … with a _team._

Tsutomu pinches himself to make certain he’s not dreaming, then practically sprints down the road towards his house.  (And stops, and turns, and sprints in the other direction, once he realizes he’s gone the wrong way again.)

 

Tsutomu changes into gym clothes faster than he’s ever changed before.

To be fair, he’s never had to change particularly fast before, but he still thinks it’s pretty speedy.  He’s on his way to Oohira’s house in ten minutes flat.  Unfortunately, as he realizes about halfway back towards the school, he doesn’t actually know where Oohira’s house _is._

Tsutomu stops and stands frozen in the middle of the street.  His mind races, scenarios suggesting themselves and playing out like a scattering deck of cards.  What if he never finds Oohira’s house?  What if he spends all night running around town and forgets how to get to _his_ house?  What if he somehow runs into another district?  What if he runs into another _dimension_ ?  What if this was all a big practical joke and none of the others want to play volleyball at _all_?  What if –

“Hello, Goshiki,” says a deep voice behind him.

Tsutomu whirls around to find Ushijima looking at him, dressed in gym clothes, his purple ball in hand.

“Hi!” Tsutomu replies.  “Are you going to Oohira’s house?”

Ushijima nods.

“Cool!  Awesome!  I was going there, too, except …”

“You don’t know where he lives,” Ushijima finishes.

“Yeah.”  Tsutomu bows his head.  “Sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?”  Tsutomu looks back up, and Ushijima has cocked his head, is looking at him as though he’s a curious new species of plant he wants to examine.

“I … I didn’t know …”

“Never apologize for not knowing,” Ushijima says.  His voice is deep and rough, but kind – like the bark of a really old tree.  “He did not tell you.  Now, follow me.”

Ushijima starts walking.  His strides are long – Tsutomu has to do a rather undignified hop-skip to catch up.

They arrive at Oohira’s house within a couple of minutes.  Oohira is sitting on the porch – his porch has a _swing_ , which fascinates Tsutomu, because he always thought swings were only for parks.

“You guys are fast,” he says when they approach.  (Tsutomu beams.  He’s never been called fast before.)  “You can go over to the lot, if you want – it’s just a couple of houses that way.  I’m going to wait for everyone else.”

Ushijima nods and keeps walking in the direction of Oohira’s outstretched arm.  Tsutomu waves at Oohira, then follows.

The lot is nothing special, at first glance.  It’s tucked between two buildings unceremoniously and blends into the landscape perfectly, all cracked asphalt and boarded up windows.  Tsutomu thinks he can see vines growing in the corner, running up the side of what must be the abandoned apartment building.  One lone lamppost stretches up off to the right side of the lot – a solitary guard of a dusty kingdom.  When Tsutomu looks up, he realizes that there’s no light bulb in the lamp.

But Ushijima doesn’t look at the cracking pavement or the invading vines or the lonely lamppost.  He just walks to the center of the lot and starts tossing, sending his ball high in the air as though trying to send it into orbit.

Tsutomu runs in after him.

“Hey!” he says.

Ushijima turns to look at him – and for a moment, paused in profile in the golden-blue late-afternoon sunlight, he looks strangely inhuman – or strangely more than human, like a kami taking the form of a boy.

Tsutomu shakes the strange feeling, ignores the pounding of his heart in his chest, and asks, “Do you want to try a serve?”

“A serve?” Ushijima repeats.

Tsutomu nods.  “Yeah!  It’s the move you used to start a match.  You toss the ball, and then you spike it down, like – _”_  Tsutomu tries to demonstrate, flailing his right arm in the air.

Ushijima holds out the ball.  Tsutomu takes it and stares at it, unsure – he’s never really played volleyball, has only ever looked at pictures and read about it – and, okay, he’s looked at a _lot_ of pictures and read every article he could find, but does that make him qualified to teach someone like Ushijima, a third-year, tall and strong with a deep voice and features that belong on an ancient king –

“Show me,” Ushijima says.

Okay.  Ushijima trusts him.  So maybe … maybe he _can_ do this.

Tsutomu takes the ball.  He tosses it above his head.  Pulls his arm back.  Shifts his weight.  Spikes.  And –

And the ball spins straight down into the pavement.

It takes all of Tsutomu’s self-control not to curse aloud.

“That was!  Um!  The wrong angle!” he tells Ushijima.  “Or - the wrong timing!  The wrong something.  But you … you get the idea, right?”

Ushijima doesn’t say a word in response.  He walks a few paces forward, his shadow growing long in the afternoon light, and retrieves the ball.  And then, and _then_ –

He leans back, he tosses the ball above his head, he pulls his arm back, he shifts his weight, and he _spikes_ –

And the ball soars in a long arc across the lot to land on the asphalt with a clean _smack._

It’s the same sequence of movements as Tsutomu had used, the same basic principles, the same laws of physics.  But where Tsutomu’s ball had fallen, Ushijima’s soared.  Tsutomu watches Ushijima’s face, after the ball lands.  His expression doesn’t change – or, it does.  His mouth remains a hard line, but something in his eyes brightens, as though reflecting the sun.

 _I’m going to learn from him,_ Tsutomu vows, right there in the cracking asphalt and the late-afternoon sunlight.   _I’m going to learn from him, and one day, I’m going to beat him._

Suddenly, Tsutomu becomes aware of noise from the street behind him.  Not noise – cheering.  Clapping.  Yelling.  Tsutomu’s head polite applause before, from audiences at his father’s parties, but he’s never heard applause like this, applause like the entire world is celebrating.

He turns around – and they’re all there.  Oohira and Yamagata and Kawanishi and Semi and Shirabu, all calling out things like, _Nice one, Ushijima!_ and _Incredible, Ushijima!_  and _Do that again, Ushijima!_  Even Tendou looks close to cracking a smile.

Tsutomu wants that.  Wants cheers like that.  But for now – for now, Ushijima points at him and says, “Goshiki knew how,” and Oohira claps him on the back, and Semi gives him a begrudging nod, and Kawanishi offers him a high five, and Shirabu shouts, “Let’s play some fucking volleyball!” and they all charge onto the court, filling it with brightness and sound and hope.

For now, this is more than enough.

“Let’s play some fucking volleyball!” Tsutomu echoes, wondering what the fourth word (which he's never heard before) means..  He raises his fist in the air, and it feels like victory.

 

And play volleyball they do.  Well.  More or less.

It takes them half an hour to set up the net, for one thing.  The three clotheslines Semi brought are all impossibly tangled, as though a horde of children had tried to use them to play cat’s cradle.  And then, once they untangle that mess, there’s the problem of how to hang the lines.  Nobody is quite tall enough because the net is supposed to go above their heads, and the only person who knows how to actually tie knots that will hold is Shirabu.  (Eventually, the job is performed by Tsutomu, sitting on Ushijima’s shoulders and trying to squash his excitement about being _the tallest person in the world_ while Shirabu shouts up very specific and very difficult to follow instructions.)

Once they have a court, they need to decide boundaries.  (The building?  The street?  But if they don’t use the building and the street, how will they know when the ball is out?  Kawanishi ends up having to go home and get some chalk to draw on the asphalt.)  Once they have boundaries, they need to warm up.  (Ushijima directs the group on several sprints around the lot, proving both that he has the endurance of a tree and that the lot is much too small for laps.)  Once they’ve warmed up, they need positions.  (Ushijima decides to be a spiker, surprising nobody.  Tsutomu shouts that he wants to be a spiker, too, surprising nobody.  Tendou holds his hands up, and Kawanishi high-fives them – making them the blockers.  Semi and Shirabu announce that they want to be setters at the exact same time, then try to wipe each other off the face of the earth with their glares for the next several minutes.  Yamagata sighs and says he’ll work on the bumping and diving thing, since he doubts he’ll ever grow tall enough to reach the net.  And Oohira offers to just do whichever other positions they need.)

Finally, as the sun droops lower in the sky, the group assembles into two teams: Ushijima, Shirabu, Oohira, and Kawanishi on one side and Tendou, Semi, Yamagata, and Goshiki on the other.  Ushijima tosses the ball above his head, leans back, pulls his arm back, shifts his weight, spikes –

And the ball whizzes clean past Yamagata and out onto the street.

“Damn it,” Yamagata curses.  He retrieves the ball, returns to his position, then fixes Ushijima with a steady stare.  “Try it again.”

Once again, Ushijima serves, and once again, the ball passes Yamagata as easily as though he’s frozen in place.  Yamagata asks for a third try, and misses a third serve – then a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth.  When they get to fifteen, Tsutomu hears Kawanishi lean over to Shirabu and whisper, “If he misses again, I’m going home and getting my lit homework.”

After twenty tries, Oohira says, “Look, clearly, this isn’t working.”

“Then what _will_ work, huh?” Yamagata retorts.  Sweat is streaking his T-shirt, and his left knee is scraped from when he dove after serve number seventeen.

“I don’t know,” Oohira admits.  “Goshiki?” he goes on, turning his gaze on Tsutomu.  “You’re the expert.”

Tsutomu _is_ the expert.  He’s never been an expert before, and the more the afternoon goes on, the more conflicted he is about the title.  Can he still be called an expert if he’s guessing on everything he says?  Is the way he’s telling everyone about volleyball really what volleyball is like?  Are they all going to abandon him once they realize how little he really knows?

“I think …” Tsutomu says.  His voice is high, squeaky, almost breaking.  “I think.  Um.  I think we need to practice … differently.”

“Differently _how_?” Yamagata asks, taking a step closer to the net.  His eyes glint with something steely, determined – Tsutomu takes a step back out of instinct.

“Well, in the … In the, um, interviews I’ve read,” he stutters, “players talk about how they drill really hard.  Like, practicing a hundred serves every day, or a hundred spikes, or a receives … Maybe we should do … Something like that.”

“Repetition,” Ushijima suggests.

Yamagata glares at him, but Oohira nods.  “We can’t play this game if we can’t receive a serve,” he says, “so we need to practice until we can.  I think.  What do the rest of you say?”

Tendou nods.  Shirabu shrugs.  Semi rolls his eyes.

“As long as we have something to do,” Kawanishi says.

They take turns receiving – first Ushijima’s serve, then everyone else’s, taking turns until each person has had a go.  It’s slow going, with only one ball for eight people, but each time someone returns the ball to the server, the server spends a little less time chasing after it.  (Well, except for that one time Tendou threw too hard and the ball went all the way across the street.)  It’s receiving practice, but it’s also kind-of serving practice, and bumping practice, and tossing practice.

And by the time the sky is waning purple with the twilight, long shadows painting the lot in shades of black and gray, they’ve all gotten better, ever so slightly.  Shirabu tosses the ball accurately enough that Ushijima can hit it twice in a row, Oohira receives the ball even though it’s going towards the apartment building, Kawanishi saves a high ball with his arms up.  Tendou fakes the whole group into thinking he’s serving to the right instead of the left, Semi receives a ball with the tips of his fingers, Ushijima serves with enough force to dent a patch of grass.  And Yamagata saves more than anyone else – fourteen balls, total.

And Tsutomu … Tsutomu gives advice, wherever he can.  He remembers pointers from articles he didn’t even recall reading, corrects the form of guys two years older than he is, explains the principle behind a good serve even though he has yet to manage a truly successful one himself.  He’s gone through slides of volleyball games hundreds of times, read more articles than he could take with him when he moved, but he never realized volleyball, _real_ volleyball, could feel this incredible.

_If this is only what drills felt like – then what will it be like to play a real game?_

As he leaves the lot to head home, probably late for dinner, Tsutomu turns and looks at the lot.  It’s strange – it hasn’t changed much, but it’s barely recognizable from the lot he stepped into with Ushijima hours before.  The cracked asphalt is drawn over with even white lines, the invading vines have been bruised by fast serves, the lonely lamppost has been entwined with clotheslines.  The lot is no longer an intended-playground-turned-drafty-ghost town.  Actually, it’s no longer a lot at all.  It’s a volleyball court.

Tsutomu looks at the court and wishes he had a camera – wishes he could capture this image forever so that he can remember this feeling forever, this lightness in his chest that feels like he’s flying.  He wonders if this is how the spiker in his favorite slide felt, when he hit that ball.

And then, he thinks, no.  This is better.

 

 

_January 7, 1946_

Wakatoshi runs every morning.

He wakes up early, when the sun peeks through his open window – no need for an alarm clock.  Changes into a T-shirt, gym shorts, and sneakers, maybe a jacket if it’s colder, waiting where he left them on his dresser the night before.  Takes his father’s old watch, mailed to him in an impersonally-addressed box with a jacket, some papers, and a useless medal.  Slips out the front door and into the gathering daylight.  

His mother is still asleep.  His mother is always asleep, when she isn’t at work.

This morning is the same as any other: the horizon is pale blue tinged with gold, the birds are greeting the rising sun, the neighborhood is slumbering.  There’s a faint breeze from the west.

Wakatoshi used to run with his father, when he was younger.  His father was only a laborer at one of Hinode’s lumber mills, but he liked to keep in shape.  He said he was training – for a fight, or a war, or a disaster.  And so, as soon as he was old enough to run without stumbling over his own feet, Wakatoshi decided to train, too.  He could never keep up with his father, but his father would always wait for him.  He would stretch, or practice pull-ups, and when Wakatoshi came charging around the corner, he’d swoop him up and hoist him into the sky, telling him that he was the strongest boy in all of Japan.

This morning is the same as any other – except that the road isn’t empty.  There is someone standing on the side of the road next to Wakatoshi’s house.  Someone with dark eyes, sharp features, and red hair bright as the sunrise.

“Hello, Tendou,” Wakatoshi says.  “What are you doing here?”

Tendou points at Wakatoshi, then at himself – and it’s only then that Wakatoshi realizes that he’s wearing a T-shirt, gym shorts, and sneakers, same as Wakatoshi.

Wakatoshi runs alone.  Every morning.  It’s the one time of day when he doesn’t have to talk to anyone, or think about anyone, or _be_ anyone except himself.  He can focus entirely on the pumping of his legs, the rhythm of his breaths, the pounding of his heart.

He looks at Tendou.  Tendou stands still, holds his gaze.  He stands like a shadow growing shorter in the midday sun.

“I won’t hold back,” Wakatoshi says.

Tendou shrugs and bends his knees.

Wakatoshi starts running – and Tendou follows.

Tendou’s fast, but he can’t exactly keep up.  He’ll sprint ahead of Wakatoshi, run out of breath (or get a cramp, or get tired), stop, and wait for Wakatoshi to pass him, then take off again.  It seems like an odd way of running to Wakatoshi, who prides himself on his endurance, but it seems to work for him.  They soon settle into a pattern, heading up the road into the mountains.

After a couple of kilometers – twenty-five minutes, by Wakatoshi’s father’s watch – they turn around, resuming the same sprint-rest-wait pattern.  Or, at least, Wakatoshi thought they had, until he turns around and realizes he passed Tendou several minutes ago and hasn’t seen him since.

School starts in forty-five minutes.  If they don’t get back soon, they won’t have time for breakfast – or they’ll be late.  But Wakatoshi remembers how his father always waited for him, even when it took him so long to catch up.

He picks a sturdy-looking tree and starts stretching.

 

They aren’t late to school, as it turns out – but they _are_ late to the morning meeting their friends had arranged the previous day.

“Where were you guys?” Oohira asks when they walk up together, both munching on blackened toast – breakfast, a la Wakatoshi’s mother.  “We’re planning our next volleyball practice.”

“Yeah, where _were_ you?” Semi chimes in, before either of them can answer.  “Even Goshiki was here before you, and he got lost five times on the way to school.”

Goshiki waves, beaming.  He holds up a large envelope and announces, “I brought more photos.”

“Running,” Tendou says.

The group quiets, and looks at him.

“We were running,” Wakatoshi elaborates.

Everyone looks from him to Tendou, then back to him.  Wakatoshi wonders if he’s missing something important.

“Okay, well, don’t be late tomorrow,” Oohira says.

 

 

_January 8, 1946_

The next morning, Tendou shows up on the road next to Wakatoshi’s house again – and this time, he isn’t alone.

As they’re stretching before starting up, a small, dark-haired blur charges up the road and narrowly misses bowling Tendou over.  It skids to a stop in the center of the path, bows, and exclaims, “Please let me run with you guys!”

“Good morning, Goshiki,” Wakatoshi says.

“I don’t want to be rude and barge in if this is a private thing you guys do,” Goshiki goes on, “but I know you’re doing this to train for volleyball –”

Wakatoshi didn’t know he was doing this to train for volleyball.  He shoots a look at Tendou, who arches his eyebrow as though to say, _of course we’re doing this to train for volleyball, you idiot._

“And Ushijima is the best spiker out of all of us so far,” Goshiki is saying, “but I want to be the best spiker in all of Japan, so please please _please_ let me train with you!”

Tendou is quiet.  Goshiki is definitely not quiet.  And he’s probably not as fast as Wakatoshi or Tendou.  He’s almost certainly liable to get lost.  But if he doesn’t run with them, he’ll probably run on his own, and he’ll have even less idea what he’s doing.

“We won’t hold back,” Wakatoshi says.

And he might be imagining it, but he thinks that, as they start jogging, out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tendou smile.

 

_January - May, 1946_

From there, Wakatoshi’s solitary early-morning ritual becomes a full-fledged team activity.

Shirabu is the next to join: he coasts past them on his bike one morning, to which Goshiki shouts that using a bike is cheating, to which Shirabu shouts back that he wasn’t trying to join their stupid club in the first place.  He’s there bright, early, and glaring the next morning.  Anything Shirabu can do, Semi can do better, so he joins soon after.  The two of them perfect the art of arguing as they run, and Goshiki gets faster out of sheer self-defense.  Oohira and Kawanishi join as soon as they manage to find running shoes (Oohira’s are from his grandfather, Kawanishi’s an old pair of Wakatoshi’s),  and Yamagata is last only because his commute means he has to find a place to shower and change before school (that place being Oohira’s house.)

They all run together, except that they don’t, really.  Wakatoshi runs up into the mountains and they all follow at varying distances.  Tendou keeps up or lags behind, depending on what mood he’s in.  Goshiki tries to beat Wakatoshi and, usually, fails.  Semi runs until he gets tired, then turns around and goes home, to Shirabu’s delight.  Kawanishi walks, unless Shirabu or Tendou can goad him into running with taunts (Shirabu) or terrifying facial expressions (Tendou).  Oohira and Yamagata run together at a slow, steady pace and call out encouraging things to Wakatoshi when he passes them on his way back.  (He doesn’t need the encouragement, but it’s a novel experience, and not a bad one.)

It becomes a team bonding activity, because apparently now that they’re a team, they need to _bond._  Oohira tells them all this in his Important voice one day at lunch (the kind but stern, _I’ll-make-you-hate-me-but-it’s-for-your-own-good-voice_ that reminds Wakatoshi of an elementary school teacher), then drums out all kinds of ideas for how they can go about this bonding process.  The way he talks about it, it sounds like some kind of special lesson that they need to learn before they can accomplish anything.

Oohira makes a list of his bonding ideas on the chalkboard in their classroom, and they go down the list, doing things together.

They eat dinner together, after practicing.  The group piles into the one convenience store in town and buy their weight in pork buns, dried seaweed, senbei, and as many other snacks as they can carry.  Shirabu tries to get Wakatoshi to pay for everything.  He tells Shirabu that he’ll pay for everyone else if Shirabu pays for Yamagata.  This shuts Shirabu up.

They go see movies together, at the cinema a few train stops away.  Or, at least, they _try_ to see a movie together – Wakatoshi leaves halfway through because he doesn’t find it interesting, Tendou follows Wakatoshi out because he’d rather be reading comics, and Semi and Shirabu get kicked out of the cinema for arguing about characterization of samurai in the Meiji Restoration.  After that, the movie-going group becomes whoever’s actually interested in the movie that’s currently playing, for convenience’s sake.

They do homework together, at whomever’s house is empty and clean.  This one ends up working surprisingly well, because Wakatoshi understands biology well but was never good at lit, and Tendou’s decent at lit but despises math, and Semi’s good at math but doesn’t see the point of history, and Shirabu will argue about history until everyone else has literally gone home, and Kawanishi knows how to solve problems but never shows his work, and Oohira shows his work meticulously and has an explanation for everything, and Yamagata laughs at them all because he does all of his work on the train.  Goshiki tells them problem-solving strategies he learned from elite private tutors, and then Semi asks him what that was like, not having to go to real school, and then Oohira gets them to focus again.

The team eats lunch together, studies articles on volleyball together, goes on runs together, does a hundred other impossibly mundane things together.  And, of course, they _play_ together.  Every day after school, the abandoned lot echoes with shouts and grunts and slams of balls against asphalt (they have more than one, now.)  Every day after school, Shirabu sets more accurately, and Yamagata receives more spikes, and Tendou blocks more balls, somehow managing to guess precisely when the spikers opposite him will hit.  (When he hits a kill block, he grins - and Ushijima might be imagining it, but he thinks the grins are getting wider.)

They can play real games now, as real as four-on-four in an old lot with a clothesline net and chalk lines can get.  And it feels pretty real.  Sometimes, when Wakatoshi hits a perfect spike, and his side cheers and the other side hisses, he can close his eyes and imagine he’s in one of Goshiki’s articles, playing on one of the shiny hardwood courts they have in Europe, or in one of the shiny metal stadiums they have in America.  He can imagine he’s the star player of a team dominating on every stage, with fans and sponsors enough for his mother to never have to work again.

He can imagine he’s invincible – and his team is invincible, with him.

Wakatoshi isn’t sure when he started thinking of them as a team – when he started thinking of them as _his_ team.  But they are his team, even without jerseys or equipment or a proper name.  They’re a team because they cheer for each other and challenge each other and work with each other.

Wakatoshi used to only feel quiet when he ran in the mountains by himself.  But now he can feel quiet sitting and reading with Tendou, or volleying with Oohira, or explaining plant biology to Kawanishi.  Slowly, quietly, his sphere of quiet is growing.

 

 

_March 7, 1946_

Something strange is going on with Oohira.

This morning, Kinomori-sensei asked him to get some paper from the supply closet.  It’s a simple chore – Hayato has done it himself a couple of times.  Oohira just needed to open the closet, step inside, and reach the stack on the top shelf.  He would’ve be able to complete the task more easily than Hayato, even, since he’s a few centimeters taller.

But Oohira didn’t just open the closet, step inside, and reach the stack on the top shelf.  He opened the closet, took two steps back, and stopped – staring at the enclosed space, his eyes wide and face sunken in as though he’d seen a ghost – or, no, as though he _was_ a ghost.  Kinomori-sensei had to ask someone else to do the chore instead.

Hayato doesn’t know what this means, but he can’t stop thinking about it.  This image of Oohira frozen in front of the supply closet sits in the front of his mind, like one of Goshiki’s projector slides.  Hayato sees it when he closes his eyes, sees it when he dozes off in class.  He can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong.

He’s still seeing that image when he walks to the classroom during lunch – is still seeing it when he bumps into Oohira, standing just outside the door.

“What’s going on?” Hayato asks.

“What?” Oohira says.  He looks around, confused – as though he hasn’t been occupying Hayato like an impossible math problem all morning.

“In the classroom,” Hayato clarifies.  “Why haven’t you gone in?”

“Oh, I, um.  I figured I would wait for someone else.”  Oohira looks at the closed door, then at Hayato, then at the door again.  There’s an expression on his face that seems familiar – seems like an echo of his expression from that morning, looking at the supply closet.

And then, Hayato realizes that he’s had this conversation before.  He’s seen Oohira standing in front of an empty classroom at lunch time, waiting for someone else to go in.  He’s seen this – three times?  Four?  Five?

“I just remembered something I forgot see you later!” Hayato shouts.

He turns on his heel and races back to class 3A – just in time to catch Ushijima, who had stayed after to ask Kinomori-sensei something about food webs.

“Ushijima,” Hayato says, breathing heavily.  Running in a uniform is much harder than running in gym clothes.

Ushijima looks at him, expression unreadable.  “Yamagata.”

“I think something’s up with Oohira.  That thing, when he couldn’t go into the supply closet, and he never goes into the classroom first at lunch, and – and I don’t know what else, but I’m sure there’s more, I’m sure I could think of it.”

“You could,” Ushijima agrees.  “But …”  He trails off, thinks for a moment, then shrugs.  “It’s probably better to just leave him alone.  I’m sure he can deal with it.”

The words echo strangely in Hayato’s mind – and then suddenly, he realizes that he’s had this conversation before, too.

 _I’m sure he can deal with it,_ Hayato’s mother had said.   _He’ll get better.  He’ll be fine._

But Hayato’s father wasn’t fine, and Hayato can’t help wondering – as Ushijima turns and heads to the classroom – just how _not fine_ Oohira could be.

 

 

_March 20th, 1946_

“Hey, Kawanishi!”

Taichi stops, turns around.  The light is fading and the shadows are growing long, but he can make out a figure running towards him – Shirabu, in his shorts and T-shirt, jacket thrown over his shoulder.  His hair is caught in the wind, lifted like a blond halo over his face.

Their houses are located in the same direction from the court, but Shirabu always stays late to work on his serves, so they never walk home together.  Taichi doesn’t understand why he practices serving so much.  He’s never going to be as good as Ushijima or Semi, so why bother?

“Kawanishi!” Shirabu staggers to a halt next to Taichi and folds his arms up behind his head as he catches his breath.  “Glad I caught you.”

“Is there something you want to talk about?” Taichi asks.

“Yeah!  Kinda.  I wanted to ask a favor.”  Shirabu drops his arms and starts walking.  Taichi falls into step with him, waits for him to continue.  “You’re good at science, right?”

Taichi is at the top of their class in biology and chemistry.  His father used to talk to him about the science behind his medical practice during dinner, and when he went to the front, he left Taichi all of his scientific books.  Taichi has read them all cover to cover, some of them twice or three times.

To answer Shirabu’s question, he shrugs.  “Yeah, I guess.”

“Great!” Shirabu exclaims.  “So you can help me study for the bio test tomorrow.  I don’t get this genetics stuff at _all._ ”

Taichi isn’t sure how he feels about being volunteered for extra work.  But then, Shirabu is his teammate, and he isn’t sure how he could refuse without sounding rude.

“Okay,” he says.

“We can study at my house,” Shirabu tells him.  And he leads Taichi there, the road silent between them except for Shirabu’s occasional comments about how he thinks his sets are getting more accurate and how he might be able to run the whole mountain trail without stopping tomorrow.

Shirabu’s house is small and cramped, all piles of boxes and toy cars underfoot.  It smells like soy sauce and soap.

“It’s not technically my house, it’s my uncle’s,” Shirabu explains as he kicks in the door.  “He works at the lumber mill, making coffins – hey, Kaoru, pick up your shit!” he yells, picking up a miniature dump truck with fading orange paint and setting it on a side table.

A kid not one meter high, with blond hair and a petulant expression just like Shirabu’s, zooms in, grabs the truck, and zooms out, making _vroom_ sound effects as he goes.

“Trucks don’t go _vroom_ , idiot!” Shirabu shouts after him.  “They don’t move fast enough!”

Kaoru either doesn’t hear him or is actively avoiding him.  Taichi watches the scene with fascination.  He’s never had siblings, and the concept has always seemed endlessly exhausting.

Shirabu kicks at another one of the vehicles, a toy taxicab sitting on the bottom step of the staircase, as he leads the way upstairs. “Annoying little brat, always in the way.  It’s a good thing my cousin isn’t around today, at least – we can have the bedroom to ourselves.”

“Right,” Taichi says.  “What was that you said, about coffins?”

“Oh, you didn’t know?  Hinode is home to the biggest coffin manufacturer in the country.”  Shirabu says this as though it’s the biggest producer of rice or telephone parts.

Taichi spends a few seconds wondering if, had his parents’ bodies been intact, they would have been buried in Hinode coffins.  But the thought has passed by the time he reaches the top of the stairs.

Shirabu’s room is messy, not unlike the rest of the house.  Tatami mats are barely visible beneath piles of dirty clothes, notebooks, and magazines.  For a moment, Taichi thinks he sees a mouse darting beneath a particularly smelly pile near the back wall.

Shirabu doesn’t bother to clean up – just flops down onto his mat face-forward with a sigh.  Taichi clears a small space on the floor next to the mat, then sits down cross-legged.

After a second (and Taichi wondering if Shirabu might have fallen asleep), the setter rolls over onto his stomach and props himself up on his elbows.

“My textbook and stuff is over there,” he says, pointing.  “Everything we need to study.”

“What do you mean?” Taichi asks.

“Well, we have the book, we have my notes, we have some fancy extra worksheets I got from Sensei – what else do we need?”

“No, I mean … What do you mean by study?  What do we _do_?”

Shirabu sits up and gives Taichi a long, long look, as though he’s just decided that Taichi is an undercover spy and is checking for signs of suspicious behavior.

“Don’t you … _study_?” he finally asks.

Taichi shrugs.  “I do the homework assignments when we have to, but I never do anything extra.”

Shirabu lets out a low whistle.  “And you get top marks on all the science exams.  That’s just not fair.”

Taichi shrugs again, unsure of what to say.  He’s never studied because he’s never needed to.  Systems, logical patterns, it all just makes sense to him the first time he reads it.  And the schoolwork he isn’t as good at, like writing essays, he can still get decent grades on without putting in any extra effort.  He doesn’t see any reason to try harder.

“Well,” Shirabu says, stretching out on his back again.  “If you’re such a genius, it should be no problem for you to teach me genetics.”

As it turns out, it _is_ a problem for Taichi to teach Shirabu genetics.

It’s a fairly big problem, in fact.  Almost as big a problem as genetics is, itself.  Taichi has never had to explain concepts that, to him, make as much sense as simple arithmetic, but Shirabu sees Punnett squares and proportions and linked genes as an impossible separate language.  Every time Taichi attempts to describe how the concepts function, Shirabu gets more tired of the whole subject of biology.

It’s the opposite of how he is on the court, Taichi thinks.  When they introduce a new drill or a new move or a new _anything_ at practice, Shirabu will keep working on it until he can do it perfectly.  But give him a question about codominance, and he’s ready to quit in seconds.

That’s how they eventually end up lying side by side on their backs on Shirabu’s tatami mat, talking about volleyball.

“I think our team is getting a lot better,” Shirabu says.  “I mean, it’s only been a few months, and we don’t have a coach or anything, but I feel like we’re better.”

“You’re definitely better,” Taichi tells him.  And it’s not a lie – Shirabu works harder than anyone else, besides Ushijima and maybe Goshiki, and it shows in the clean form of his sets and the height he gains when he jumps.

“You are, too.”  Shirabu turns, props himself up on an elbow, looks at Taichi.  His gaze is calculating, as though he’s examining Taichi’s entire skillset as a volleyball player and finding him wanting.  “But you don’t work very hard.”

“I do work hard!” Taichi protests – the words sound hollow, even to him.  “I go to practice, and I run with you all in the mornings.”

Shirabu shakes his head.  “You only do what you have to.  You’re lazy about blocking, you slack off during drills, you walk on the morning runs – shit, you look for any excuse to leave practice early.  I don’t get it.  Why would you stay on our team if you don’t like volleyball?”

“Because …”   _Because I don’t know if anyone besides the team would want to be friends with me.  Because I don’t want to try my hardest and then fail again.  Because I don’t want to lose anyone else._ “I _do_ like volleyball.”

“Okay.  Sure.  But do you _love_ volleyball?”

Taichi shrugs.

“Do you _live_ for volleyball?  Do you spend all day longing for practice?  Do you dream about blocking spikes?”

Taichi shrugs again.

“I dunno, Kawanishi,” Shirabu says, laying back down on his back.  “I just feel like being part of this team, playing volleyball, is the most important thing I’ve ever done.  If you don’t feel the same way, I don’t know what you’re doing with us.”

He phrases it like that, with the _I don’t know._  Somehow, it hurts more than if he’d phrased it like a demand.

Taichi thinks about how to answer.  He doesn’t know, either.

He’s still thinking when he leaves Shirabu’s house, trading noise and clutter and toys underfoot for quiet and cleanliness and his grandmother and aunt whispering behind his back.  He’s still thinking when he eats dinner in silence, still thinking when he goes to bed that night, still thinking when he takes his biology test the next day.

_Being part of this team, playing volleyball, is the most important thing I’ve ever done.  If you don’t feel the same way.  If you don’t.  Don’t._

 

 

_April 11, 1946_

“Guys!” Goshiki shouts, sprinting into the classroom.  “Guys guys guys guys _guys!”_

The kid always sprints, Eita thinks.  He never walks anywhere.  It’s as though he always needs to announce his presence, by bursting through doors or leaping onto the court or whatever.  To Eita, it seems terribly unnecessary, not to mention arrogant.

“What what what what _what,”_ Kawanishi deadpans, without looking up from his book.

“Look look look look _look!”_

Goshiki clatters to a halt in the middle of his already-gathered team, sits down, and smacks a thick magazine down onto the floor.  It’s open to a page full of sports equipment descriptions, all accompanied by intricate drawings in black and white.

“What are we looking at?” Eita asks, peering over Goshiki’s shoulder.

The kid points.  Eita follows his finger, and sees it – a volleyball, shiny and official and _regulation._  Nothing about their team is regulation, except for the court size (although nobody has ever measured it with a ruler, so that’s up for debate.)  But this ball … it could make them a real volleyball team.  Imagine, playing volleyball with an actual volleyball.  Eita doesn’t think he’s wanted anything in his life as much as he wants this, now.

And then, he sees the price.

“Shit,” Shirabu says – echoing what they’re all thinking.

“We could pool our money,” Oohira suggests.

“ _What_ money?” Yamagata retorts.

“What if we tried to do a charity event?” Oohira asks.

“And advertise, how?” Kawanishi replies.  “Please help us get a volleyball, so that our team can … what?  Play slightly more legitimate volleyball?”

“Guys,” Goshiki interrupts.

He’s grinning.  Eita doesn’t get why he’s grinning – does he think this plight is funny?

“Guys.  I can buy it.”

Seven faces whip around to stare at Goshiki.   _“What?”_

“I have some money saved,” Goshiki explains.  “From allowance, when I used to get allowance.  I never used it, and there’s definitely enough to get this.”

The room erupts into whoops and cheers as the whole team high-fives Goshiki and yells about incredible he is.  Oohira even lifts the kid up onto his shoulders.

But Eita, honestly, still don’t quite get what they all see in him.

 

Eita waits outside of the junior high second-year classroom.

The kids emerge quickly at first, then more slowly, like water dripping from a broken faucet.  They’re all smiles and shouts, calling out to each other about after-school plans.  They’re so innocent, Eita thinks.  So far from the horrors of high school.

Goshiki is one of the last to emerge.  He waves goodbye to another boy, then turns to head towards the school entrance – he doesn’t even notice Eita until Eita steps directly in front of him.

“Semi!” Goshiki exclaims.  “Hi!  Do you want to walk to practice together?”

Eita had expected confusion, questions about what he’s doing in the junior high hallway, but Goshiki seems content to keep walking, chattering idly about some story he read in class earlier.  This conversation might be harder than Eita expected.

There’s finally a break in Goshiki’s chattering when they step out of the school and into the mid-afternoon sunlight.  It’s a warm spring day, the sky almost cloudless, with the slightest of breezes ruffling Eita’s hair.

“Goshiki,” he says.  “Why are you doing this?”

Goshiki cocks his head, eyes wide and blue as the sky.  “Doing what?”

“Buying the volleyball,” Eita elaborates.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Goshiki asks.  “It’s for the team.”

“Yeah, but.”  Eita exhales, looking up at the sky as though it would have any suggestions for how to explain himself better.  It doesn’t, so he goes on: “You don’t have to.  We could come up with the money ourselves.  We could figure something out.  You’re just … giving it to us, like it’s charity.  What would your father think?”

“What would my father … what?”  Goshiki starts walking faster, but Eita keeps pace with him.  (The kid may be growing fast, but Eita’s legs are still longer.)  “What does my father have to do with this?”

“I know that your father was an admiral,” Eita tells him.  “I know he was high ranking.  In charge of half the Imperial navy.  And I bet you don’t see him anymore.  But he left you an inheritance, right?  You said he left you allowance.  How would he feel about you spending it on buying some commoners a fancy volleyball?”

“He wouldn’t care!” Goshiki shouts.  His voice is impossibly loud in the quiet street, echoing up into the mountains – _wouldn’t care, wouldn’t care, wouldn’t care._

Now, Eita thinks – _now_ , he’s getting somewhere.

“Why not?” he asks.

“Because – because he never cared.”  Goshiki is speaking more quietly now, but his voice is harsh, barely contained, like a spring wound too tight.  “He only pretended.  He paid for tutors, bought me presents, played with me in front of his friends – but he never told me anything.  I wasn’t allowed in his office.  I wasn’t allowed to ask him about work.  I was just allowed to play the good kid.”

 _Play the good kid_.  It sounds familiar – impossibly familiar.  Eita wonders if Goshiki’s father ever told him that an officer does what he must to survive.

“Why didn’t you try to find out what was going on anyway?” Eita asks.  “My father wouldn’t let me into _his_ office either, but I broke in when he was away – I looked at all his files, I found out what he was really doing.  I learned how much of what he’d told me was lies.”

Goshiki shakes his head vehemently.  “I didn’t want to know what was going on.  I just wanted him to talk to me.  Spend time with me.  Whatever.”

Eita isn’t sure how to answer that – he moved so quickly past not understanding what his father was doing to hating it that he never considered moving on differently – never realized that Goshiki might not have wondered the same things he wondered.

“So … you don’t know,” he says slowly.  “You don’t know what he was doing, or why.”

“Yeah,” Goshiki says.  He stops walking and stares down at the ground, his fists clenched at his sides.  “But one day, he gave me an old magazine from one of the people he worked with – a government person or a military person, I don’t know – and it had this story about a sport called volleyball.  I thought it looked incredible – the jumping, the spiking, the flying above the net – and wanted to know more.  And he didn’t care what I did as long as I didn’t bother him, so he bought me more – more magazines, more pictures, more slides.  More volleyball.”

“More volleyball,” Eita echoes.

Goshiki looks up, and Eita realizes that they’re in front of Oohira’s house.  Oohira is standing on the porch, arms crossed over his chest, staring at them.  He doesn’t like talking about people’s parents – always turns the conversation back to volleyball or schoolwork when the topic comes up.

“What are you talking about?” he asks.

“N-nothing!” Goshiki stammers.

Eita looks at Goshiki and smiles – he’s going for apologetic, but judging by how Goshiki takes a step back, it comes out more aggressive.

“Just … different strategies for getting to the same place,” Eita says.  “Volleyball stuff.”

Oohira raises an eyebrow at them, but, after a moment, shrugs and goes inside.

Eita turns to Goshiki.  “Hey,” he tells the kid.  “Thanks.  For buying the volleyball.  It’s gonna make us a better team.”

“Yeah, I know!” Goshiki exclaims, a smile dawning on his face.  “We’re gonna be all official!  Like we’re a real team!  It’s so exciting!  And then maybe we can get a real net, and we can find someone to take pictures of us while we play, and …”

He keeps chattering the whole way into the team’s makeshift changing area in Oohira’s common room.

 

 

_May 23, 1946_

“There’s something you’re not telling us.”

Hayato stands in the doorway of the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist and one finger pointed at Oohira.  Oohira, sprawled on his bed, looks up from his homework and stares.  His gaze oscillates between the towel and Hayato’s face.

Hayato had a theory that confrontation would be easier just after he took his bath, because firstly, it would be impossible to predict, and secondly, he’d be able to use his time in the bath to figure out what he was going to say.  Hayato counts himself lucky every day that Oohira’s grandfather allows him to use his house’s furo before going home after practice, he really does.

“What are you talking about?” Oohira asks.  He’s feigning innocence, which Hayato both expected and accounted for.

“You’re hiding something from the team.  Something important,” Hayato elaborates.  He walks further into the room, grabs his clothes off of Oohira’s desk (which is actually clean enough to set clothes on, a fact that constantly amazes Hayato), and starts changing.

“How do you know?”  Oohira sits up so that he’s leaning against the headboard and crosses his arms.  This move usually scares the underclassmen into submission, and sometimes even works on Semi and Tendou.  But Hayato is prepared.  He had a bath.

He counts the reasons off on one hand as he pulls on his pants with the other.  “One.  You’re scared of enclosed spaces.  You wouldn’t go into the supply closet a few weeks ago when Kinomori-sensei asked you to get extra paper.  And then, when I thought about that, I realized that you never go into the classroom first at lunch – even if you get there first, you always wait in the hallway for someone else before you actually go in.”

Oohira opens his mouth to respond, but Hayato doesn’t let him.

“I’m not done.  Two.  You deflect whenever anyone mentions parents.  Even if they’re fictional parents, like in that discussion we had about the English reading yesterday.  You also deflect whenever anyone mentions the war, especially if it’s someone on the team.  It’s like you’re afraid of the conversation getting too serious or something.  And three.  You’re too nice and patient.”

“How is that a –”

“Hear me out.  You never yell at anyone.  You never get mad.  Not even at Semi and Shirabu, and they can get pretty fucking annoying.  Like last week, when they broke that window – and you just volunteered to pay for damages?  It’s ridiculous.  Either you’re some kind of good spirit in disguise tasked with protecting all of our asses, or you’re hiding something.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Oohira says.  He shakes his head, but Hayato can see a light sheen of sweat beginning to form on his face.  “All of that is … is circumstantial!  And anyway, if I was hiding something, what would it even be?”

Yamagata shrugs.  “I don’t know, but I’m guessing something bad happened.  Probably has to do with why you live with your grandfather now.”

Oohira frowns, then reaches a hand up to rub the back of his head.  “I don’t understand … Why would you care about something like that?  Why would it be something I’d have to tell the team?”

Hayato, halfway through putting on his socks, drops one on the floor.  Oohira’s room is clean and organized perfectly – it reminds Hayato of a room at a hotel, everything arranged perfectly so that each guest will have an identically pleasant stay.  When he drops his sock, it lands white against the gray carpet.

“Because,” Hayato says, walking over to stand at the foot of Oohira’s bed.  “It’s scary.  It scares me, and I bet, once more people start to notice, I bet it’ll scare them, too.  You’re only acting like you’re calm and happy, aren’t you?  What if one day you can’t keep pretending nothing happened, and you snap?  And you hurt one of our teammates before you realize what you’re doing?

“Nobody knows what’s going on with you.  and that’s scary as shit.  Even if you can’t talk to the team about it, you can – you can _talk_ to me, Oohira – Reon.  You can tell me whatever it is.  You don’t have to pretend it’s just - not there.”

Hayato stops.  Catches his breath.  Waits.  It’s probably too much to hope, to get a full story, but thinks he might get something.  Oohira isn’t Hayato’s father.  Oohira is his friend.  Oohira is reasonable.  Oohira is –

“Get out of my house.”

Hayato laughs, bitter and disappointed.  His plans for confrontation never work.  He doesn’t know why he thought this one would be better.

“Or what?” he asks.  “What’re you gonna do?  Smile at me?”

And then, Oohira gives him a look.  No, not a look – a Look.  His face is steely, his mouth a rigid line, his eyes icy.  It’s like the look he gives Semi and Shirabu when they’ve been arguing too long – except that this one is a hundred times worse.

Hayato doesn’t say another word.  He grabs his things and gets out.

(Hayato is allowed to return the next day, provided he adhere to a new strategy: pretending that conversation never happened.)

 

 

_June 12, 1946_

The morning Reon’s school was bombed started out like any other morning.

He woke up with the rising sun, his mother pulling open the curtains and laughing at his futile attempts to shield his eyes.  He ate breakfast with his parents, his mother making faces at the paper and his father fighting with the coffeemaker to produce just one more pot, come on, he’s teaching geography today and that never goes quickly, he needs this extra pick-me-up.  He walked the kilometer to school with them, half-listening to them argue about some new government policy and half-watching the trees on the side of the path, looking for patterns in the branches he hadn’t seen the day before.  He sat in class, at the desk by the window, and drew the clouds outside in the margins of his history notes.

It was a clear day.  Reon remembers that.  If he closes his eyes, he can picture the precise color of the sky: perfect cornflower blue, the color of his mother’s favorite dress.

The sky is that color again, today.  Perfect cornflower blue.  Dotted with perfect white clouds, as fluffy and symmetrical as cartoon sheep.  Reon notices the sky when he walks to school by himself, watching the road for new potholes.  He notices it when he sits in class – in the center of the row, far from the windows, taking careful notes as Kaneda-sensei lectures on economic policy.  He notices it at lunch, sitting in the empty classroom at the end of the hall with his friends, not hungry enough to eat the bento he packed for himself that morning.

_His father always made the best bentos.  With just the right proportions of rice, sashimi, umeboshi.  His mother would do the grocery shopping, bartering with the vendors to get the best prices for the freshest produce, but his father would put it together, measuring carefully, always humming along to the record player as he worked.  He loved to listen to American jazz – said that just because America was the enemy didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate their rhythms._

His friends are talking about cowboys, today.  Semi, Yamagata, Shirabu, and Kawanishi went to see this new film last weekend, and apparently the newest, coolest trend in America is wearing tall hats and long boots, shooting first and asking questions later, and doing wild horse stunts as though you’re trying to get yourself killed.  Semi is insisting that the cowboys are the best heroes, while Ushijima is arguing that the militia men are cooler.  Yamagata’s taken Semi’s side.  Shirabu’s taken Ushijima’s, just for the sake of arguing, Reon thinks.  At some point halfway through the debate, Tendou went up to the chalkboard and started drawing a horse.

“What do you think, Oohira?” Semi asks.  Reon drops his chopsticks, startled, but Semi doesn’t notice.  “Would you rather be a cool cowboy, riding around the frontier, not taking orders from anyone, or would you rather be a _militia man_ , upholding the _law_ or whatever?”

“It’s not _or whatever,_ ” Shirabu interrupts before Reon has a chance to answer.  “It’s a very important job!  Keeping order!  Helping society function!”

“I think,” Reon says.

The ground lurches.

 _Oh no,_ Reon thinks, very calmly.   _Not again._

The world is shaking.  The world is shaking.  The world is falling apart.  The world is a glass ball sitting on a mantelpiece, and some clumsy kid is pushing it off by accident.  And now it’s falling – landing – shattering – millions of glass shards piercing the floor and transforming the room into a torture chamber –

_The first bomb landed in the courtyard a few minutes before lunch.  It sounded like a thunderclap, at first.  Reon thought it was a thunderclap.  Until he heard the screaming._

The world is shattering – the ground moves back and forth like a kid on a swing, like a ship on an unsteady ocean, like a nation that just lost a war.  Someone is screaming – no, someone is crying – no, that’s an alarm blaring – no, that’s _Reon_ , screaming – _Get out, get out, you have to get out, everyone has to get out –_

 _The second bomb landed in the year five classroom.  Reon’s mother’s classroom.  He raced through the hallway, coughing at the smoke.  He had to get to her.  He had to.  But halfway there, the plaster ceiling fell through.  And beneath the crumbling and the thud, Reon heard his father shouting,_ Get out, get out, you have to get out.

Reon is screaming, and the ground is shaking, and the sky outside is cornflower blue.

 

The world is dark, and clouded, and intangible.

Whispers are dancing around the edges of Reon’s consciousness - as though dazed ghosts are lingering in this empty classroom, stuck in a loop of yesterday's memories.  And then, one voice breaks through - one voice, calling Reon’s name.

Whose voice is that?  His father’s?  No, his father ran – ran into the fire and the destruction.  His father is gone.  And this voice sounds younger than his father’s.  Younger and angrier.

“Oohira!  Reon!  Come on, man, you’re scaring us – you’re scaring the kouhai.  You can’t do this.  We need you.”

Reon opens his eyes.  Blinks a few times.  The room is hazy around him and his skin feels damp and clammy, as though he’s looking at it from underwater.  The ceiling is still intact – that’s strange.  He thought it collapsed.  And the air isn’t thick with smoke, and it doesn’t stink of sulfur.  And nobody is screaming.

Nobody is screaming, but – seven worried faces fill Reon’s field of vision.  Two angry, three concerned, one red-rimmed.  And Ushijima, as hard to read as ever.  That’s comforting, somehow.

Reon tries to sit up and is immediately pushed back down.  The floor is hard and cold beneath him – oh, that would explain why his back hurts.  He is so cold.  The floor is cold, and his skin is cold.  He wants to rub his hands together to bring warmth back into them, but they move so slowly, he only succeeds in placing them together.

“What … what happened?” he asks.  His voice is raspy, as though he’d been yelling.  Kawanishi hands him a water bottle, which he drinks from gratefully.  The water spills down his throat like liquid fire, warming him from the inside out.

“There was an earthquake,” Yamagata says.  “A pretty bad one, I think.  Floor shaking, things falling, everything collapsing.”  He points to the corner of the room – the formerly neatly stacked chairs have toppled like a wooden avalanche, splintering to pieces across the floor.  “And you started yelling something about how we all had to get out, and then fell onto the floor screaming.  It was scarier than the earthquake.”

Reon takes a moment – stares at the ceiling – collects his thoughts.  A violent shudder runs through him, shaking the damp and cold from his skin.  If he was underwater before, now he’s emerging from the surface.  He begins to rub his hands together slowly.

It’s June of 1946.  He’s in a spare room at Hinode Public School.  An earthquake happened.  Only an earthquake happened.  All of his friends are okay.  He’s okay.

“I’m … I’m really sorry about that,” Reon says.  He sits up slowly, and this time, nobody pushes him back down.  Ushijima puts a hand on his back to keep him steady.

“My parents …” Reon goes on.  He places his hands down at his sides, palms flat on the ground.  His teammates - his friends - are watching him carefully, as though expecting him to start screaming again at any moment.  He can’t stop shaking - he can’t stop shaking - he feels as though he might throw up.  If he was underwater before, now he is standing in the middle of a desert, burning beneath the scorching sun.

“My parents died in a very scary accident.  And this … earthquake … it brought back memories of that accident.”

The others look at him, silent.  They want to ask him more.  He can see it in the wide circles of their eyes, the slant lines of their mouths.  But nobody is brave enough to pose a question.

Reon tries to force a smile.  He knows it falls flat.  He pushes down the bile rising in his throat and says, “You … you don’t all have to stay here for me.  You should get back to class.”

Semi and Yamagata look at each other, as though trying to figure out how to tell him something.  It’s strange, Reon thinks, to be the one being told instead of the one doing the telling.

“We can’t leave,” Goshiki says.

“What?” Reon asks.

“We’re blocked in,” Kawanishi explains.  “The doorway fell through.”

And the faces in front of Reon part to reveal a view of the front of the classroom.  The wall is intact, the chalkboard is warped and its chalk all missing or broken, a few ceiling tiles lie cracked on the floor - and the door is completely blocked.  From what Reon can tell, the frame came loose and brought the plaster from the wall above with it.  It would take several people to clear it.  It would take screams for anyone to even know to start clearing.  It would take an avalanche to get them out.  And that’s only what Reon can see from this side of the door.

They can’t leave.  They’re trapped here.  Trapped in an old, dusty room with old, stale air – and they could be stuck for hours until someone finds them, if anyone knows to find them – and Reon wonders if this is how his mother felt, just before she died – like the walls were closing in and she couldn’t breathe and –

“Oohira,” Ushijima says.  “You are okay.”

Ushijima’s hand is steady on his back.  Ushijima’s gaze is steady meeting his.  Reon takes deep breaths and tries to focus on steady.  Even.  Here.

He is okay.  His friends are okay.  Someone will clear the rubble, and they will be okay.  If he tells himself this enough, maybe he’ll start to believe it.

 

Reon keeps repeating to himself that he is okay, but it becomes harder and harder as time passes.

They sit together, in the empty classroom.  They sit in a lopsided circle, the way they do before practice when they’re figuring out which drills they’re going to run.  It’s the same way they sit before practice, except that this is nothing like practice.  At practice, they have goals, they have ideas, they have things to talk about.  But now, there’s only silence.

Nobody talks, or even eats – their lunches sit abandoned off to the side, half-finished bentos going stale as midday light trickles through the windows.  Yamagata munches on a chip every once in a while, but even he is eating halfheartedly.

Reon begins to wonder if he is still stuck inside a memory.  If he is one of the ghosts lingering in this empty classroom.  If he is only a shadow escaped from the person casting it and let loose in an unfamiliarly bright world.  Intangible.  Indeterminate.  Incorporeal.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, there in that empty, broken room – only that the sunlight is slowly fading, and the food is growing stale and unappealing, and the silence is falling thick and heavy around his ears.  For long moments at a time, he feels his ribs tightening and his throat closing up, as though he’s forgotten how to breathe.  As though he’s sinking underwater again, with no strength to pull himself back up.

Reon wonders idly if they’ll die here.  It’s possible, he supposes.  Nobody knows where they are.  They could waste away.  Run out of water.  Maybe run out of air.  It _would_ be a terrible way to die, he thinks.  Better to die like his parents – to go out in a burst of flame and smoke, saving all the children in your school and leaving your son behind –

“My sister’s name was Minako.”

The voice rings out clear, not distorted or hazy or muffled by heavy silence.  It’s not a voice Reon recognizes, and for a second, he thinks that someone has found them – but why would that person talk about his sister?  Maybe it’s one of the ghosts, the shadow of a boy who studied in this classroom.

But it’s not a rescuer, or a ghost.  It’s Tendou.  Tendou’s mouth is moving.  Tendou’s eyes are sweeping the lopsided circle intently.  Tendou is _talking_ – his voice is raspy, unpracticed, but he sounds confident.  As though he’s been rehearsing for this for the past year.

“My sister’s name was Minako,” Tendou repeats.  “She was four years younger than me.  She had brown hair, like my mom – it was curly, always messy, always getting tangled in zippers and caught in knobs of desks.  She wanted to cut it short like mine, but our parents wouldn’t let her.  They had to compromise, though, so it ended up shoulder-length.  And she tried to put it in ponytails, hold it back with clips, but they always fell out when she wasn’t paying attention.  I think our parents spent more money on clips for her than they did on all of my clothes combined.

“She had hair like my mom’s, but everyone said she looked like me.  Same face or same eyes or something.  I hated it.  I didn’t want her to look like me.  She was so _annoying_ – she’d steal my clothes even though they didn’t fit her and my books even though she couldn’t read them.  And she never shut up.  Whenever I was at home, I’d have to listen to her squealing non-stop – _Satori, look at this!_ and _Satori, see what I can do!_ and _Satori, wanna know what I did today?_

“I shared a room with her, and I had to wake up to that every morning.  She jumped on my bed to wake me up.  One time, she jumped on my stomach by accident, and I had a bruise for weeks.  I was so mad.  I wouldn’t talk to her.  But then, she gave me a new book – I think my mom bought it – and I had to read it to her, and then we were okay.  And she was always coming up with these weird games, like playing samurai or playing pirates, and I’d have to go along with them even though the rules didn’t make any sense.  

“ _She_ didn’t make any sense.  She was weird and small and squealing and I – I miss her.  Every day I miss her.  I had to get an alarm clock at my aunt’s house.  Nobody steals my stuff.  Nobody _talks._  When my aunt and I have dinner, we just sit there, completely silent.  And I hate that it’s quiet, but I never know what to say – she always knew what to say, and there’s no point in talking if she isn’t there to hear me.”

Reon has never heard Tendou say this much at a time.  He’s never heard Tendou say this much, period.  He’d accepted that Tendou didn’t talk, tried to help him be a part of their group anyway – but now, Tendou is _talking_ , describing a sister Reon never knew he had.  Before Reon’s eyes, he’s painting himself in reds and purples and blues and golds, a shadow taking on new dimension beyond the person who once cast it.

He looks around the circle at the rest of the team’s faces, and realizes he’s far from the only one shocked.  They’re all wide-eyed, staring.  Goshiki’s jaw is hanging slack.  Only Ushijima’s expression is unreadable as ever – he’s inscrutable, watching.

“What happened to your sister?” Ushijima asks.

“She’s dead,” Tendou answers.  His voice sounds even, but there’s a tremble behind it, as though he’s never said those words out loud before.  “Same as my parents.  I went to school one morning, took the early train so that I could meet up with my friends, and by first bell everything was gone.  My dad was crushed on the train on his way to work.  My mom and Minako were at home when the – when the house collapsed.”

Reon tries to remember where Tendou said he was from, his first day of school.  Or, he didn’t say.  Kinomori-sensei did.  Was it Ginza?  Nakano?  Omotesando?  He doesn’t remember.

Reon asks, “Tendou … where did you live?  Before this?”

“I went to school in Ushita,” Tendou answers.  “But I lived in Hiroshima.”

Reon remembers going to school the day after the bombing.  He remembers hearing words like _impossible, devastating, tragedy._  He remembers seeing pictures of piles of rubble where there used to be buildings, scorched earth where there used to be grass.  He remembers murmurs in the cracks between closed doors, teachers wondering that they cannot win this war.  

Survivors – emaciated, ghostlike, dark circles beneath their eyes – told stories of clouds of ash, scorching flames, lives stolen in a single moment.  In one interview Reon had read, the woman said that she didn’t have time to scream – her home was just gone.

And Tendou’s family was there.

“I’m … I’m so sorry,” Reon says.  He wants to say more, wants to convey the grief he feels, wants to lift Tendou’s burden, but he doesn’t have the words.

The others echo his condolences, bowing their heads and murmuring quietly.

“I’m so sorry I yelled at you for not talking, when you first got here,” Semi says.  “If I were you, I would’ve punched me in the face.”

Tendou shakes his head.  “It’s okay.  Really.  I still miss them, I miss them a ton – I wake up sometimes and think I’m back at our old house and Minako will jump on my bed and Oka-san will call me down for breakfast and Oto-san will mess up my hair and give me the comic section of the paper.  And then I remember that our house is gone, and they’re gone, and I want to go back to sleep and never wake up.  Sometimes.  Yeah.  But … but I think of it like Steve Rogers.”

Reon doesn’t know who that is, and by the looks of it, neither does anyone else.  Tendou half-smiles at their blank expressions - it’s almost like he’s laughing at them, and something about that makes Reon want to cheer.

“Steve Rogers is Captain America,” Tendou explains.  “The hero of my favorite comic.  I’m learning English, or trying to, so that I can actually read his story.  And Steve Rogers is – he doesn’t have parents, like me.  But that doesn’t make him want to give up.  Instead, he gets really strong and becomes a superhero and punches Nazis.  And I want to – I don’t want to punch Nazis, but I want to get stronger.  At volleyball, at school, at everything.  I want to do everything my parents and Minako couldn’t do.  I want them to be proud of me.”

There’s water trickling down Reon’s cheek, as though he’s standing in the rain.  But they’re under a roof, and the water – when his tongue darts out to lick a drop away from his cheek, the water is salty.  An ash cloud stuck in his eye.

In his lap, Tendou’s fists are clenched. His gaze is set with determination, the same look he wears when he’s about to jump for a block.

“Tendou,” Goshiki says.  Everyone looks at him – he’s staring at the floor, but his small fists are clenched, too, and his eyes are blue as the sky.  “I’m sad that your family died and your home is gone, but … but I’m kind-of happy that that happened, too.  Because if it weren’t for the bomb, you wouldn’t have moved here, and I wouldn’t have met you, and we wouldn’t have become friends.  I’m glad we’re friends.”

“Yeah.”  A smile breaks out across Tendou’s face, and it makes the whole room brighter – like red kojima flowers growing up out of soil fertilized by a forest fire.  “I’m glad we’re friends, too.  I’m glad all of us are friends.”

“Yeah!  Friends!” Goshiki shouts.  He holds up his right hand for a high five.

It’s the least opportune moment for a high five Reon could ever imagine, but Tendou slaps it.  Slaps it so hard, Goshiki’s hand is strawberry-red afterwards.  But he’s grinning, and Tendou’s grinning, and – and Reon feels ridiculous for ever thinking they might die here, because they couldn’t.  They wouldn’t.  They’ve come too far to be taken out by a mere earthquake.

They’ve come too far.  They’ve come so far.

“I think … I think your parents would be proud of you already,” he tells Tendou.

“You think so?  Really?”  Tendou turns to him, and he’s still grinning, and his eyes are shining – as though he has an ocean stuck in his eye, bright aquamarine and violet and blue.

“Really,” Reon replies.

Tendou beams at him, like a sunrise soaking pink into the ocean, and then the room falls quiet again.  But this is a different kind of silence – where the silence from before had lurked, dark and dangerous, like a steel-grey thunderhead ready to strike, this silence is patient, comforting, like fluffy, rosy-red clouds dancing across the morning sky.

“My parents had a garden,” Kawanishi says suddenly.

Everyone looks at him.  He’s sitting cross-legged, long limbs folded in underneath himself like careful origami, staring at the ground.  With one of his hands, he’s fiddling with the hem of his jacket.  Trying to pull the threads apart.  He’s been sitting there like a shadowy spectre for hours, but now he shimmers into solidity as he tells the story of why he’s lingering on earth.

“It was – it was a beautiful garden,” Kawanishi goes on.  “It had so many flowers, of every color – and herbs, and tomatoes, and even wild raspberries.  Whenever people passed it, they would stop for a moment to look at all the plants, at the the pinks and greens and violets.  And I was so proud, that I lived in the house with the coolest garden – I would invite people over just so that they could look at it, then tell them to go home before we’d even gone inside.

“I don’t know how the garden is doing now.  Well.  I know.  I just don’t like to think about it.  I tried to take care of it after they left, but it was so difficult.  I couldn’t weed everything by myself.  The watering can was too heavy for me to lift if I filled it up all the way.  I couldn’t remember which flowers needed sunlight, and which did better in shade, and how often they all needed to be watered.  Weeds started to take over different parts of the garden, and flowers started to wilt, and leaves started to shrivel.  By the time I left, it was all just skeletons of stems, shells of leaves.

“We replanted some of the flowers in my yard here.  All of you helped me do that, and I’m thankful.  But I still can’t help feeling like I should’ve done something more – all they left me was their garden and my father’s medical book, and I couldn’t keep the plants growing, and the book couldn’t save them.”

Kawanishi is still pulling at his jacket.  One of the threads of the bottom hem has unraveled and he’s twining it among his fingers, as though if he pulls hard enough, he can pull his parents’ garden back to life.

“Kawanishi,” Tendou says.  “What happened to your parents?”

“They’re … they’re gone.”  There’s a tremble in Kawanishi’s voice, his quiet confidence unraveling as he yanks another thread out of his jacket.  “My father was a doctor in the army.  My mother was a journalist who went to the front to tell people’s stories.  Both of them … They weren’t stationed together, but that didn’t matter.  Oto-san got caught in an air raid, my Oka-san in a surprise attack.”

“Do you want to be a doctor, like your father?” Tendou asks.  Reon had thought that he’d talked so much before, he must have run out of words - but his voice is still clear, still confident, still strong.

Kawanishi looks up – and there’s a brightness in his eyes, blue-violet oceans stuck there.  “I don’t know,” he answers.  “Sometimes, I think – maybe.  But he was a brilliant doctor, the smartest doctor in the whole army, and we still lost and he couldn’t save himself – so what could I do?  He went to the front even though he knew how hard it would be, he saved lives, he was a hero, and … I want to be like that.  I want to help people.”

Tendou half-smiles and tells him, “You’re helping people already.  For example, when you smashed down Shirabu’s jump shot yesterday and he got so mad he nearly ripped the net down, that was hilarious and it helped me.  It helped me a lot.”

Kawanishi wipes at his eyes.  There’s a smile hovering at the corner of his mouth, threatening to break free - like a wave about to crash over a manufactured stell wall.  “Thanks.”

“What the fuck,” Shirabu says.  “Is my anger really that funny to you?”

“Yes,” Tendou says instantly.

“It’s hilarious,” Semi agrees.

Shirabu scowls at the pair of them, but his mouth is twitching at the corners – as though he’s trying not to smile, too.

After that, the afternoon stretches on with conversation.  All of them tell their stories – talking about parents, friends, people lost in the war.  There’s no order or rule determining who talks next.  It just happens, naturally as trees sprouting up green and brown in a new forest or clear rainwater filling a lake after a drought.  Whoever is ready to speak speaks, and everyone else listens.

Yamagata tells them about the nights when his father stank of alcohol and menacing growls – how he once smashed the family’s only set of fine china on the floor because Yamagata’s mother had forgotten to buy his favorite brand of beer – how when he died at the front, Yamagata was overwhelmed with relief.  Shirabu tells them about a factory that made parts for the best ships in the world – about an accident that stole metal and resources and Shirabu’s father – about a funeral on a windy day in October, shivering in a too-thin jacket with the cold and with rage.  Semi tells them the story of a businessman who claimed to work for the people but only worked for himself – the story of a son who grew into a sharp face and cutting words the way most boys grow into pants – the story of a sword that found its way to the depths of a riverbed.

And Goshiki tells them – quiet and declarative, as he never is – Goshiki tells them that he still doesn’t know where his father is.  That he disappeared one day a few weeks after the war ended, and that after that, his family’s furniture and his mother’s jewelry started to disappear, too.  That he hasn’t heard from his father since, and he doesn’t know if he ever will.

Through all of the stories, one voice rings out the clearest.  It’s Tendou who asks questions when stories aren’t quite finished, who closes his eyes when someone speaks of death, who cracks jokes when the mood threatens to drop.  His voice echoes through the empty classroom, bouncing back and forth from wall to wall like a volleyball given life of its own.  And his laughter – his laughter is cackling, grating, obnoxious, but so blindingly _bright_ , shining a light to scare off the demons at their door.  It’s impossible not to laugh with him.

Reon thinks about how far Tendou has come.  Hiroshima to Hinode.  Silence to laughter.  Shadow in a crowd to brightness and light in an empty classroom.  He thinks about how far Tendou has come, and thinks that, if Tendou can be brave enough to break his silence, he can be brave enough to admit that he’s broken.

Goshiki finishes speaking, and the eyes of the room once again turn to Reon.  But he is not scorched by the sun in a dry desert, now - he is feeling the warmth of a lush forest, surrounded by green and blue and gold.

“My parents were both teachers,” Reon begins.

It’s a strange feeling, having all of his friends watch him like this – as though they know tragedy is coming.  Yamagata leans forward, Ushijima reaches as though preparing to steady him if he falls, Goshiki opens bright eyes wide as the sky.

“My parents were both teachers.  They taught at a public school a few districts away – my mother taught year five, and my father taught year one.  The school was small, it had all the grades from one to nine.  But it was wonderful.  It always smelled like old books and new chalk – you know, that first-day-of-school smell that makes you actually look forward to class.  I studied there.  My friends all thought it was lame, that my parents were teachers – that we walked to school together and that Oka-san made my lunch in the teachers’ break room and that Oto-san would high-five me in the hallway after class when I aced a test – but I thought it was so cool.  I thought my parents were the best teachers, the smartest teachers.  And they _were_ – they were brilliant.

“I’m talking about my school in the past tense because …”  Reon takes a deep breath.  Tells himself, stern as Kinomori-sensei when she warned his class against cheating: it is June of 1946, and he is okay.  “I’m talking about it in the past tense because it was bombed.  Not on purpose, not in an air raid.  It was a new shipment being brought to the front, delivered in a fighter plane – a box broke, and two bombs got loose.  It was an accident.  It was only two.  It didn’t make the papers.  But it – it killed my parents.

“That’s - that’s why I - that’s why what happened earlier happened.  The ground started shaking, and I thought I was back in my old school, with bombs falling and smoke everywhere and Oto-san screaming for me to run.  I’m sorry I scared all of you.  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry I couldn’t stay strong the way Oto-san did–”

Reon’s voice breaks.  He lifts his hands to his face, curls forward into his knees.  His mother always told him to set a good example for the other children, to stay strong and reliable, to never let anyone see him cry.

_They can’t see him cry.  They can’t see him cry.  They can’t see him cry._

There is a hand on Reon’s back.  A strong hand.  Steady.  Reon knows it’s Ushijima – giving him something to stand against, a reason to come to school every day.  The same way he had when Reon first transferred.

“Don’t be sorry,” a voice says.  A high voice, earnest – Goshiki.  “It’s okay.  It’s okay to cry.  It’s okay.”

And that, somehow, is enough.  Reon opens his mouth and sobs into his hands.  His shoulders shake.  His nose runs.  It’s disgusting, he feels pathetic, but he feels … relieved.  As though for over a year he’s been straining to hold up this falling beam, worrying that it would crush him if he ever let go, but now his friends have given him the strength to throw it away entirely.

For long seconds – minutes – he doesn’t know how long – Reon sits and cries.  Ushijima rubs circles into his back.  When he finally wipes his face and opens his eyes, the circle has drawn closer.  All eight of them are touching – Ushijima’s hand is still firm on his back, Goshiki is leaning on Kawanishi’s shoulder, Shirabu and Semi’s knees are knocking together, Yamagata’s right hand is resting on Tendou’s calf.  Even though the sky is darkening outside, the room feels brighter than it had been when they first gathered for lunch.

“Hey,” Tendou says.  “Favorite moment of volleyball practice.  Go.”

“When Shirabu was so busy yelling at me for _setting wrong_ he didn’t look where he was going and walked right into the lamp post,” Semi replies almost immediately.

“Oh, my _God,_ will you ever _let me live?”_ Shirabu protests.

Semi smirks.  “Never.”

“My favorite moment was when I hit that really cool straight spike!” Goshiki exclaims.

“See, _he_ has a good favorite moment.  One that actually _makes sense,”_ Shirabu says, staring accusingly at Semi.

“Shirabu!  You’re complimenting me!”

“Don’t get big ideas.”

Listing their favorite moments from practice soon devolves into talking about volleyball, which devolves into talking about what they’re going to do the next time they practice, which devolves into training regimens and strategies and a thousand other things.  They’re still talking about volleyball when a heavyset man wielding a shovel pokes his head into the room.

“I heard voices in here, but I thought I must’ve been imagining it,” he says.  “Why are you kids in here?  We cleared the rest of the school out hours ago – I thought this whole wing was abandoned.”

“Not to us,” Tendou says.

“Yeah!” Goshiki adds.  “We eat lunch here!  And talk about volleyball!”

“Volleyball!” everyone else cheers.  Their voices spill out of the room into the late-afternoon sunlight.

The man stares at them all blankly for a solid ten seconds (Reon counts) before shrugging and offering to widen the passage he shoveled through the wreckage.

As they file out of the classroom, Yamagata catches Reon’s gaze and nods.  Reon smiles, sheepish, and nods back.

_I don’t want to say I told you so, but._

_Yeah.  You told me so.  I know._

 

Satori’s throat hurts.

It’s funny – he’s talked all his life, always been the person with the wordiest answers in class and the most talkative of his friends, ready with a long rambling rant for every occasion.  But now, after a year of silence, one afternoon of talking is apparently enough to make him feel as though his throat has been attacked by a litter of angry kittens.  It’s dry and scratchy, and talking now would probably only make it hurt more.

And he doesn’t have anyone to talk _to_ right now, anyway – the school day was long over by the time they left the classroom.  The sunlight is fading slowly, sky softening from bright cornflower blue to deep indigo.  A few brave cicadas have emerged to shrill in the forest around the town.  It’s late – past dinnertime, probably.  Satori’s aunt must be wondering where he is.  Probably angry.  But not worried – at least, not worried enough to go looking for him.

The shadows are growing long in the quiet neighborhood.  Satori walks among them, never staying in one place for too long.  He holds his head tall, his hair a mess of red flames in the dusk, and dances among the shadows.  Skips, hops, gallops, even sprints from one lamp post to the next.  As he goes, he starts to sing – an old folk song his mother used to sing to him and Minako when they were younger.  Red and gold and violet are spilling over the edges of the sky, and his song fills the shadows with warmth.

Satori’s throat hurts – even now, as he sings, it feels scratchy and foreign, like a shirt that hasn’t been worn in a while.  It hurts, but he doesn’t want to stop talking.  He doesn’t think he _can_ stop talking.  Now that he’s started, the words want to pour from his mind like an avalanche of orange leaves falling from a maple tree in fall, like a rainstorm released from a mass of blue-gray clouds, like a volleyball spiked by Ushijima Wakatoshi.  Unstoppable.

Everything he hasn’t said for the past year threatens to rise from his throat at once, filling up the air until the sky is patterned with his words.  Enough words to paint over the shadows, enough words rewrite the stars.

There’s so much Satori wants to say – so much he didn’t realize he wanted to say until now.  He wants to tell Semi that the uniform looks dorky on him, and to tell Oohira that the way he says “there we go” when he sits down makes him sound like an old man, and to tell Goshiki that his bangs are cool.  He wants to tell Kawanishi that he relies too much on logic and not enough on instinct when he blocks, and tell Shirabu that he’s so angry, he could turn the river into saltwater by pissing in it once, and tell Yamagata that he eats way too much for any one human being, seriously, where does it all go.  He wants to tell all of the team about his favorite Captain America comics, and about how to play samurai, and about why he likes fighting movies better than cowboy movies.  He wants to tell his aunt thank you for taking him in even though she didn’t have to, and tell Kinomori-sensei thank you for not forcing him to talk in class, and tell his friends thank you for giving him a place on their team.

And he wants to tell Ushijima - he wants to tell Ushijima so much, he couldn’t write down everything he wants to say, even if he filled the entire sky with words.  Maybe, once he’s taken more classes in literature – maybe, once he’s figured out how poetry works – maybe, once he’s learned to block Ushijima’s spikes – maybe then, he’ll know what to say.

Satori passes Oohira’s house.  Oohira is sitting out on the porch, not swinging, just watching the colors of the sky.

Satori waves as he passes.  “When you say ‘there we go’ when you sit down, you sound like an old man!” he shouts.

Oohira doesn’t yell back – just waves, and smiles that smile of his that always makes Satori feel as though the world might be a good place, after all.

He passes Oohira’s house, and then he arrives at the lot.  At the court.  He didn’t realize he was on his way here – didn’t consciously turn in this direction – but here he is.  Maybe Satori was always on his way here.

Satori had thought that, after everyone left school, they made an unspoken agreement not to practice today.  It was already dinner time, after all.  But there Ushijima stands – tall in the fading light, the reflections of stars and moon and streetlights making his face glow softly.

As Satori watches, Ushijima leans back, he tosses, he pulls his arm back, he shifts his weight, he _spikes_ –

The ball soars through the evening air in a clean arc and lands in the back corner of the opposite side of the court.  There doesn’t have to be a team there for Satori to know that it’s an unhittable ace.

And suddenly, Satori is so overcome with pride – for this boy who practices a hundred serves a day, who runs up the mountain for hours and never gets tired, who shared his textbooks with Satori when he was lonely and terrified – that a shout leaps forth from his throat, loud and honest as a lightning bolt.

_“Miracle boy Wakatooooooshiiiii!”_

Ushijima turns, stares.  His eyes are wide, his mouth ajar – as stunned a look as Satori has ever seen on him, except for maybe when he first started speaking in the classroom, earlier this afternoon.

He doesn’t say, “Hello, Tendou,” in that deep, rumbling voice of his.  But that’s okay.  Satori can speak for himself, now.

Satori dashes forward, picks up the ball, and serves it back.  His form is sloppy, his toss too high.  Ushijima receives it – the ball returns fast and off-kilter, heading out of bounds, but Satori dives for it anyway.  He manages to hit it up one-handed, a free ball to the other side of the net.  Ushijima runs to it, spikes it up and over – Satori sprints up to the net to block it, jumps a fraction of a second too late.

The ball crashes to the pavement half a meter from Satori.  He lands on his feet, then sits down hard and flops back.

A few moments pass.  Footsteps approach.  And then Ushijima’s face is directly above his.

“Remind me never to go against you one-on-one without warming up first again,” Satori says, grinning.

Ushijima holds out his hand.  Satori takes it and lets himself be pulled.  His hair is sticking up, dirt and dust acting as a strange kind of oil.  He tries to smooth it back down, but it doesn’t seem to want to move.

Only once Satori’s stood back up and turned around does he realize that he and Ushijima no longer have the lot to themselves.  Oohira is standing on the curb, hands on his hips, backlit by the still-setting sun.

“I want to practice with you,” he says.

And without another word, he strides forward, picks up the ball, and backs up into a serve.

 

Not half an hour goes by, and a full practice is in session.

Shirabu shows up not long after Oohira, claiming they were all idiots for practicing at night but jumping into the game anyway.  Yamagata arrives next – says he was on his way back to the train station, and nobody mentions that the train station is in the opposite direction from the school.  Kawanishi and Semi arrive together, their long strides breaking into a sprint as they realize they’re missing a game.  Goshiki races in last, shouting that he’s very sorry, his mother insisted he eat dinner before going out again, in between panting breaths.

They play four-on-four until their limbs ache, and then they practice serves and receives, and then they run up and down the block a few times, just for fun.  Tendou calls out drill ideas and words of encouragement and demands that they try it _one more time,_ his voice carrying above the court until the team has no choice but to listen.  So much for not practicing today – this practice might be even longer than usual.  Wakatoshi is struck with a fierce pride for all of them – for this team that keeps practicing even in the twilight, working until they forget lost fathers and failed wars and a nation that doesn’t know what to print in its history textbooks.

But even on a day like this, practice has to end eventually.

The breeze is picking up, the cicadas are the only noise outside of their practice, and Wakatoshi’s teammates leave, one by one.  They pick up their bags, grab their water bottles, and head home, extolling the virtues of showers and dinners and beds.  Soon, the lot is empty – empty except for the net, and Wakatoshi, and Tendou.

Tendou slides down to sit with his back to the abandoned factory, staring up at the night sky.  There aren’t many stars out yet – only a few brave lights blinking through the musky twilight – but the moon shines round and full, brighter than any lantern.  He looks strangely pale, beneath the fading sky – bathed in deep blue, as though he’s soaking in the moonlight.

Tendou sits, stares up, and doesn’t seem to notice as Wakatoshi slides down next to him.  He’s quiet, this Tendou.  Quiet like the Tendou Wakatoshi had thought he knew, the Tendou Wakatoshi had shared his books with one late summer day almost a year ago.  That Tendou spoke in points, in glances, in blinks of his wide dark eyes.  This Tendou – new Tendou, keeping-everyone’s-fear-at-bay-during-the-earthquake Tendou – he speaks in clear tones, in exclamations, in long-winded sentences that go on and on until he runs out of breath.  He laughs.  He tells jokes.  He grins.  He speaks.

Wakatoshi slides down next to this Tendou.  He holds up old Tendou and new Tendou next to each other in his mind, compares them like two pictures in one of the old puzzle books his father gave him, now sitting in a dusty box in the attic – _spot the difference._  Wakatoshi can’t spot the difference, but he knows it’s there.  Something in the light in his eyes, in the gleam of his smile, in the sound of his voice.

Old Tendou would sit quiet with Wakatoshi for hours, reading together.  New Tendou can fill rooms with his laughter, he can shout across the school, he can call out for a toss louder than anyone else on the court.  He’s loud loud _loud_ – as though all this sound has been building up in him for a year and now it’s finally released, like a mountain spring bubbling up from beneath the earth.  Or maybe it has just been hiding all this time, behind the quiet.

Wakatoshi doesn’t know which Tendou he likes more – the one that takes no space or the one that fills it.

The moon shines above them, luminous and full.  In the distance, a train rattles by – but for a moment, it sounds like an airplane, soaring overhead.

“My father was a kamikaze pilot,” Wakatoshi says.  His voice echoes in the empty lot, carries clean to the moon.

Tendou turns, eyes wide – as though he hadn’t realized Wakatoshi was still there.  But then he nods, perhaps to himself, and says, “Tell me.”

“A – a kamikaze pilot,” Wakatoshi repeats.  “He left my mother and me to bring our family honor, or to bring our nation strength, or – I do not know.  He believed in the war.  And he left my mother and me with nothing – just an empty house and a medal that gets dusty on the shelf.  She has to work two jobs just to pay for groceries.  I don’t know what I can do to help.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

“Play volleyball,” Tendou says.

Wakatoshi looks at his friend – and Tendou is staring at him, intent, eyes bright in the moonlight.

“Volleyball?”

Tendou nods.  “Volleyball.  You’re good at it, better than any of the rest of us, and … and it makes you happy, right?”

Wakatoshi has never thought about that before.   _Happy._  It’s a strange word, to him – he’s only read it in literature class, old romances and metaphorical poetry.  A strange word, an abstract concept.  Real people aren’t allowed to be happy.

But then, he thinks about the burn on his palm when he spikes, the _smack_ of the ball onto the other side of the net, the wide eyes and awed stares on his friends’ faces.  He feels stronger, on the court.  Taller.  His limbs know how to move almost before he does, as though – as though this is what he was born for.

“It does,” Wakatoshi says slowly.  “I think it does.”

“See?”  Tendou smiles – his teeth gleam, pale white.  “That’s it.”

Wakatoshi isn’t sure that’s it.  He isn’t sure this Tendou talking to him now is the same Tendou he sat down next to in class this morning.

“I used to think that, when I grew up, I would become a soldier,” he says.  “To follow my father’s footsteps, and fight for Japan.  But there is no more army to join.  And what can I do with volleyball?  It …” Wakatoshi considers, and then decides, “It makes me happy.  But it doesn’t pay for food.”

“Do you have to know right now?” Tendou asks.  He glances up at the sky, then at the road, fingers clenching and unclenching at the hem of his shirt.  “We still have almost three more years of school.  I used to think I would be an artist, maybe draw posters for the government like those ones they plastered everywhere during the war.”

Tendou pauses, runs sweaty fingers through his hair, then goes on, “But now all our posters are American, and I haven’t drawn anything in a year.  Minako was always better than me, anyway.  So now – who knows what I’ll do.  I don’t know.  But I’m not gonna worry about it until I have to.”

They still have three more years.  Three more years of practicing volleyball in the lot after school, three more years of spikes that slam into the asphalt and serves that arc across the sky, three more years of calling out for tosses and shouting after receives, three more years of lunchtime debates and early-morning runs, three more years of Goshiki’s grin and Semi’s wild ideas and Oohira’s mitigating calm and Tendou’s raucous laughter.  The stars are poking out of the indigo sky now, bright and twinkling and endless.

Wakatoshi suddenly feels light – as though if he climbed to the top of the abandoned apartment building and jumped off, he wouldn’t fall – he would fly.

“Not gonna worry about it,” Wakatoshi echoes.  “For three more years.”

“Yeah, exactly.”  Tendou grins.  “And none of us are leaving.”

 _None of us are leaving._  Hinode was Wakatoshi’s home first, but now it’s all of theirs – now he couldn’t imagine his class without Tendou and Oohira and Yamagata and Semi, he couldn’t imagine the town without this clothesline strung up in the middle of the lot, couldn’t imagine his runs as solitary.

He didn’t realize that _leaving_ was something he was afraid of until now.

“You’re certain?” he asks.

“Yeah, I am.  No leaving.”

Tendou and Wakatoshi sit there next to their volleyball court, backs against the old apartment building, and watch the stars dance.  The night is quiet, except for a light breeze, a few cicadas, the occasional train roaring by in the distance.  They stay until Tendou’s stomach betrays him, rumbling like approaching thunder – but even then, they’re slow to get up, slow to gather their belongings, slow to head in opposite directions.

For a moment, Tendou stands in front of Wakatoshi.  He tilts his head up, opens his mouth as though about to say something – then closes it, turns and walks towards his house.

Wakatoshi watches him go.  His shadow lingers, a dark gray echo of his blue-lit silhouette.  And Wakatoshi thinks, as he heads home, that he doesn’t need to like old Tendou or new Tendou better – that they’ve been the same person, all along.

 

 

_June 13, 1946_

There is a line of tape across the entrance to their abandoned classroom, the next morning.

Tsutomu is the first to arrive.  He stops a few paces behind the entrance, stares at it.  When he was a kid, and his father told him not to go somewhere, he would listen.  But he doesn’t want to listen to this.  He wants his room back.

Footsteps come up behind Tsutomu, then stop next to him.

“What’s wrong?” Shirabu asks.

Tsutomu points.  “They’ve blocked off our room.”

“What, because it’s unsafe or something?”

Tsutomu nods.

Shirabu snorts.  He has a great snort – it somehow manages to convey anger, disdain, and disgust all at once, as though he’s disappointed in the entire world.  Tsutomu sometimes wonders if he practices it.

“That’s bullshit,” Shirabu says.

He lunges forward, rips off the tape in one swift motion, and climbs through the rubble into the classroom.  Tsutomu stares after him for a few awed seconds, then follows.


	3. act three: triumph

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a lot of things to say about this act (and this fic), but i'm saving them for the end. enjoy act three, everyone. ♥

 

>   _“But someday, we’ll also be able to … You see, it’s already begun.” –[Akira](http://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=akira) (1988)_

 

_October 5, 1948_

There is a problem with their volleyball court.

Well, to say there’s a problem is an understatement about on the level of saying they’re only okay at volleyball.  The problem isn’t that the net fell down, or that snow is covering the court, or that rain has washed away the chalk lines marking out their boundaries.  All of these things have happened before, and all of them have been simple, solvable.  This problem does not seem to be solvable.  This problem is larger than a mere problem.  It merits stronger language, although Wakatoshi isn’t sure what he would use.

“What the fuck,” Shirabu announces.

That works, Wakatoshi thinks.

The old lot has been invaded, conquered, dug up.  What was once cracking asphalt has been replaced by a deep pit, dirt going down at least a meter and increasing rapidly.  A digging machine is parked in the back of the lot, devouring earth like a spirit-monster from an old horror story, devouring all it touches.  And it looks like a monster, too – shiny bright orange, printed with the logo of a construction company that Wakatoshi recognizes from a few new houses going up in his neighborhood.  It looks like a monster, sounds like a monster, even smells like a monster, stinking with motor oil.  Around the lot – or, the remains of what used to be the lot – are scattered workers, monster’s lackeys, armored termites in yellow hats and thick gray suits.

It’s as though their court – the court they’ve built up over the years, redrawing lines and buying a real net and cones for drills and extra volleyballs to keep in the back – has been stepped on.  Erased.  Eviscerated.  The place where they’ve practiced every day for almost three years, the place where they’ve become invincible – gutted in the space of one afternoon.

Wakatoshi’s chest aches, as though the monster yanked his heart from his chest and crushed it to a pulp.

“This is … I don’t believe this,” Yamagata says.

“Who the hell do they think they are?” Semi asks.

Goshiki suddenly breaks into a charge towards the growing pit, screeching high-pitched and vengeful.  Before he can make it a meter, Oohira catches him back by the edge of his shirt and holds him in place, but even he can’t stop the screaming.  The sound echoes around the space, mixing with the noise of the construction equipment like a symphony of destruction.

After a few minutes (and barely any breathing breaks for Goshiki, his lung capacity is truly impressive), one of the workers walks up to them.  He’s heavy-set, dark-skinned, with dirt-streaked arms and a kind face, his features not unlike those of Oohira’s grandfather.  As he approaches, Shirabu stiffens, as though someone just walked across his grave .

“What’re you kids doing here?” the man asks.  Goshiki - finally out of breath - takes a swing at him, but it falls far too short.

“What’re _you_ doing here?” Semi retorts.

The man seems taken aback.  He crosses his arms, stares at them as though they’re a colony of ants he’d like to crush under his boot, a tiny hill unable to stand up to the metal monster he commands.  “Sakura Construction is building an apartment complex on this lot,” he says.  “We acquired the land months ago.  We’re knocking down the adjacent building and restructuring the whole area.  It’s a huge project.  There’s a sign.”  

He points to the corner of the lot next to the abandoned building, where a white sign with bold green print reads: _COMING SOON FROM SAKURA CONSTRUCTION: HINODE HEIGHTS, 200 APTS, ALL AMENITIES, REASONABLE PRICES, CALL 03-9034-2351 FOR DETAILS._

“But … you can’t,” Goshiki protests.  He’s stopped screaming, but his eyes are too bright and his voice is thick.

“Oh?”  The construction worker raises one indulgent eyebrow.  “Why can’t we?”

“That’s our volleyball court!”

“Volleyball?  And what, exactly, is _volleyball?”_  He pronounces the word strangely, with a joking lilt – as though he’s talking about a small child’s imaginary friend.

“It’s the best sport ever!” Goshiki shouts, his voice hoarse and cracking.

“It’s a new sport, founded in America,” Oohira explains.

“It’s a game that makes you feel like you’re the strongest person in the world,” Tendou says.

The man looks examines them, one eyebrow raised and a faintly amused expression on his face.  Silent seconds pass, and Wakatoshi looks around at his team – Reon is standing solid and unmovable, Semi and Shirabu have matching venomous scowls, Tendou is staring at the man unblinking, Goshiki’s hands are clenched into shaking fists.  There’s an intensity growing about them, as though they’re gearing up to play the most competitive four-on-four of their lives.

And then, the worker chuckles and says, “Okay, well, I don’t think we’re gonna stop construction for some weird game a buncha kids made up.”

Shirabu nearly punches him.

 

“So, obviously, this can’t be allowed to continue,” Yamagata says.

They all retreated to Oohira’s porch after the incident – huffily told the construction worker that they have homework to do, as though they could do homework at a time like this.  Oohira is standing by the door, Semi is leaning against the rail, Ushijima is sitting cross-legged on the floor, and Yamagata and Shirabu are on the swing, pushing it back and forth quickly with the restless energy they _should_ be devoting to warm-ups right now.

Taichi is perched on the porch railing, facing what used to be their lot.  He has a perfect view of the construction.  The pit they’re digging seems to be getting deeper and deeper – the man they talked to said it was for foundations, that they need to dig down before they can build up.  It reminds Taichi of planting flowers, digging a hole to put seeds in so that the flowers can reach up towards the sun.  But this company isn’t planting flowers.  They’re planting something terrible, something unnatural, something that makes Taichi want to sprint off the porch and up into the mountains faster than he ever had on their morning runs.

Shirabu was wrong, he thinks.  Joining this team isn’t the most important thing he’s ever done.  Look at how easily it’s falling apart.

A tiny voice that sounds suspiciously like Shirabu’s asks him _if this isn’t the most important thing you’ve ever done, then what is?_

He ignores it.

“We should burn it,” Shirabu is saying now, a dangerous glint in his eyes.  “We should go back there tonight, get some propane, and burn the whole thing.  That’d show them what we think of their _apartment complex.”_

“No, if we did that, we’d destroy the lot completely,” Semi argues.  “We have to fill the hole in – take all the dirt they shoveled out and put it back.  And then, we could take hammers to all their fancy equipment-”

“No, you’re going about this from the wrong angle,” Tendou interrupts.  “We have to _annoy_ them until they don’t want to ever come here again.  We have to go there, and yell at them, or tell them it’s haunted, or cursed.  Or – ooh, we could play pranks on them!  Steal their lunches, or cover their stuff with sticky bean paste, or throw all their equipment into the bottom of their pit, or–”

“Or we could leave them alone,” Oohira suggests, his calm, even voice drowning out Tendou’s haphazard rambling.  “Be respectful.  Let them do their work.”

Six people gasp in perfect unison.

“Are you joking?” Shirabu demands.

“They’ve developing our lot!” Tendou protests.  “Our _court!_ We can’t just sit by and _let them.”_

“Yeah, of course we can’t.”  Oohira grins.  “I was just testing you.  So, Tendou, tell us more about these pranks.”

“Well, we could let the air out of three of the tires of their truck thing – if you only do three of the four, they can’t get insurance money for it.”

“I think we should challenge them to a duel,” Ushijima says.  “To the death.”

Everyone stares at him.

“Too harsh?” he asks.

“No, but it’s illegal,” Semi replies.  “But maybe if it isn’t to the death – like, if we win, they have to leave.”

“Yeah, but I think we keep coming back to this prank idea,” Tendou says.

They keep arguing, as the afternoon passes and the construction continues.  As Taichi watches, the pit continues to deepen and the workers continue to swarm, termites doing termite consulting about their termite-mound.  They keep leaning in to have tiny conferences with each other.  Taichi wonders what they’re talking about.  How they’re going to construct the building’s foundation, probably.  How deep the pit should be.  How to best crush the souls of the eight kids who have looked forward to playing volleyball here after school every day for the past three years.

Taichi can’t hear any of the conversation over the roar of the equipment and the arguing of his friends.  After a while, the construction and the arguing start to blend together, until his ears are ringing with all of the sound.  It sounds like a monster, he thinks.  A huge, terrifying spirit-monster that clawed its way up out of the earth to torment him, all because someone told it he was finally starting to like his life again.

He wonders when all of this – this court, this game, this team – started to be the things he looked forward to.  He wonders why watching strange termite-men dig a strange termite-hole in the place where he should be blocking balls and hitting spikes feels like watching a monster yank his heart from his chest and crush it to a pulp.

The last time Taichi felt like this, his grandmother was telling him he couldn’t take his parents’ flowers on the train.  No - the last time he felt like this, the ground shaking, and his favorite classroom was falling apart, and his friend was screaming.

Taichi thinks about how it feels to block a spike.  The rush of adrenaline as he jumps, the sting in his palm as he makes contact with the ball, the thrill of satisfaction as he watches the ball land on the opposite side.  He thinks about the look on the opposite spiker’s face after he lands – angry, vengeful, but just a little bit awed.  He thinks about his friends cheering.  His _friends_ , people who talked to him when he didn’t want to talk, played with him when he was tired, pushed him to run when he felt like walking.  People who helped him plant a garden before they even knew his name.

Maybe Shirabu was right after all.

“This is what we need to do,” Taichi says.

His voice is quiet, his voice is sure.  The arguing drops to silence, and his team turns to listen to him.

 

 

_October 6, 1948_

Reon isn’t convinced that this plan is going to work.

Sure, Kawanishi had sounded really confident when he explained it – all _my mother was the best journalist at her newspaper_ and _there’s this idiom, the pen is mightier than the sword_ – but the idea seems so flimsy, built on words and compassion.  Reon doesn’t like to rely on compassion.  And he doesn’t trust newspapers, not after the way nobody reported on the decimation of his parents’ school.

Still, this is the best plan they have, better than egging construction equipment or poisoning lunches or challenging a group of contractors to a duel, so Reon stands outside of his classroom at lunch time, trying to talk to his classmates as they walk by.

They’d all split up and taken one room each – there are eight classes at Hinode Public School now, one for each of the high school years and two for each of the junior high years.  The others suggested Reon take his own class.   _People like you, Oohira,_ Tendou had said.   _They trust you.  They’ll listen to you, for sure._

Well, so much for people listening to him.  Reon can barely get through the first sentence of the persuasion speech Kawanishi and Tendou organized over for an hour yesterday before his classmates, one by one, give him a strange look and walk away.

“Hi, do you have a minute to hear about how you can help – Hi, do you have a minute – Hi, do you –”

Before long, all the students in class 3A have passed him, headed to lunch.  The hallway is quiet - uncomfortably quiet, as though all of its occupants have faded into ghosts.  Reon stands alone, unsure of what to do.  He can’t go back to his friends and tell them he failed.  But who else is he going to convince?

“Hello, Oohira.  My, you have gotten tall.”

Kinomori-sensei looks exactly as Reon remembers her.  Long skirt, pressed white shirtwaist, dark hair pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck.  She is shorter now, though.  She used to seem so imposing, holding the power of his grades in her white-knuckled hands, but now, the top of her head only reaches his chin.

“Kinomori-sensei!” he exclaims.  He falls into a bow at the waist, instinctively he used to slip off his shoes when he entered his parents’ study.

When he stands back up, she is looking at him curiously, the same way she used to look at kids in class when they fumbled for answers she knew they could remember.  “What are you doing out here?” she asks.  “Should you be in that classroom with the rest of your friends?”

“Actually, I – wait, you know about that?”

Kinomori-sensei smiles at him kindly.  “Of course I know.  All of the teachers do.  This is a small school – do you really think we would not notice that eight of our students are spending every lunch period in the abandoned room at the end of the junior high hallway?  That room will not be abandoned any more next year, by the way,” she adds before Reon can respond.  “They are adding a third first-year class.”

Reon wonders at that – his team’s classroom, filled with small children shouting and inquiring and learning.  He wonders where the team will meet during lunch next year.  And then he realizes, with a start, that his team might not exist next year – that if they fail to save their lot, or if they don’t recruit any new people, or any number of other things go wrong, Hinode’s unofficial volleyball team will cease to exist.

“Oohira?”

Right.  Kinomori-sensei.  Standing in front of him.  Talking to him.

“What are you doing out here?” she repeats.

“I – ah, it actually has to do with my friends,” he explains.  “The eight of us play this game every day after school.  It’s called volleyball, and it’s a new sport, from America – we’ve been practicing it for almost three years, and I think we’re pretty good.  But we practice – or, we practiced – in this lot behind my house, and now that lot is being developed.  Sakura Construction is building an apartment complex there.”

“Oh my, that is terrible,” Kinomori-sensei says.  “I am so sorry.”

Reon nods.  “Yeah, it _is_ terrible.  So my friends and I are starting a petition, telling the company that they can’t build on that lot because it’s ours.  We think that volleyball is an important sport, for our town and maybe even our country – you don’t have to be naturally tall or strong to play it, like football or basketball.  By preventing us from playing volleyball, Sakura Construction is indirectly hindering Japan’s ability to develop its athletic skills and redeem itself in the eyes of the world.”

The words sound odd, coming out of Reon’s mouth.  They’re the petition’s words, not his, and they fall heavy from his tongue, like rocks forming a dam in the middle of a river.  But his old teacher listens to him attentively, her gaze never falling from his.

When he’s finished reciting, she says, “Oohira, I don’t care about your volleyball game or Japan redeeming itself or any of that.  But tell me this: your game, is it what helped Tendou start talking again?”

Reon blinks at her, trying (and likely failing) to hide his surprise.  He doesn’t think he’s ever heard her use a contraction before.

“Yes, ma’am,” he tells her.  “I think - I think it helped.”

Kinomori-sensei nods twice – quick and decisive, like a light switch flipping on.

“That settles it, then,” she says.  “I will sign your petition.  Actually, I can do you one better.  Follow me.”

She takes off down the hallway, shoes clicking heel-toe on the cement floor.  Reon stares after her for a second, then follows hurriedly.

By the end of the period, he has nine signatures on his copy of the petition – one from each of the eight teachers at Hinode, and one from the principal.

 

 

_October 22, 1948_

The headquarters of Sakura Construction are located in a quickly developing neighborhood near the eastern edge of Tokyo.

Eight boys pile out of a train car and stagger into the sunlight, blinking against the honking of car horns and stink of gas.  After several minutes of pointing at and arguing about various buildings, street signs, and passing pedestrians (Kenjirou _told_ them they should’ve brought a map), they find their way to the place where the headquarters is located: a new office building with a suspicious-looking café on the first floor.  The building is tall, sleek, and modern, all concrete slabs and steel frames.  It has round windows, like the windows of a battleship, and looks as though it was assembled by someone who’d considered becoming an architect for about five minutes before he realized it was too difficult and resolved to go into engineering instead.

Kenjirou wonders if the new apartment complex this company is building on his team’s lot is going to look like this.  The thought makes him sick to his stomach.

Before they go in, Oohira gathers the team on the sidewalk just outside.  They all circle up, the way they used to before practice – the way they used to when they had a place to practice _in._

“This isn’t going to be easy,” Oohira says.  “We have to negotiate with powerful adults who probably won’t think we’re worth talking to.  We have to seem professional and trustworthy.  We have to argue and not back down.  But I think we can do it – we have over five hundred signatures on our petition.  Almost the entire town.  That’ll make them start listening to us.  It’s just a matter of getting them to _keep_ listening.

“And to do that, we need to be quiet and respectful.  Bow to anyone you meet.  Don’t argue amongst yourselves.  Let Ushijima do the talking, at least at first.  Best behavior, as much as possible.  Okay?”

The majority of the group nods and echoes, “Yes, sir.”  Kenjirou doesn’t.  Oohira has explained this plan before – keep their heads down, only speak when spoken to, all that bullshit – but that doesn’t make him like it any more.  If someone says something that’s wrong, he has to correct them.  He can’t just _not argue_ – that’s like asking him not to breathe.

Oohira looks at him, gaze hardening as though he knows exactly what Kenjirou is thinking about and finds his excuses unsatisfactory.  Oohira’s Look is difficult to argue with.

Kenjirou nods slowly.

“Excellent,” Oohira says, and the group heads inside.

“I still don’t understand why I have to do the talking.  I am not very good at talking,” Ushijima says as they approach the entrance – a steel door that reflects the mid-afternoon sunlight, throwing it back into their faces.

“It’s because you’re the tallest, and you have the deepest voice,” Kenjirou replies.  “And you called to make the appointment.”

“But I am not very good at talking,” Ushijima presses.  Kenjirou resists the urge to snap at him.

“You’ll be fine,” Oohira assures him.  “This is why we practiced.”

They push through the double doors of the building – first Ushijima and Oohira, then the rest of the group, intruding on the clean stainless steel lobby like stormclouds rolling in over the city on a clear day.

“Hello,” Ushijima announces.  “My name is Ushijima Wakatoshi.  I have an appointment with Takamatsu-san at four o’clock.”

His voice echoes around the lobby – empty except for a janitor mopping in the corner, who gives them a curious glance.

“Ushijima,” Oohira says,  “the office we’re going to is on the eleventh floor.”

Kenjirou shares a look with Kawanishi – the two of them should really get some sort of prize for managing not to laugh.

The elevator is cramped and sweaty with eight people plus the operator, but Goshiki insists they all ride in the same one, because he feels strongly that getting separated would be bad luck.  The operator, a wizened old man with exactly two hairs on his head, asks them what they’re doing, if perhaps they’re lost.  Oohira tells him they have a meeting with Takamatsu-san, to which he chuckles and wishes them good luck.

When they step out onto the eleventh floor, Ushijima makes his announcement a second time, to all of the janitors, walls, and potted plants in the vicinity: “Hello.  My name is Ushijima Wakatoshi.  I have an appointment with Takamatsu-san at four o’clock.”

The receptionist – a young woman with short hair, prominent cheekbones, and bright red lipstick – purses her lips at them, as though she just took a bite of something sour.  After several lip-pursing seconds in which every member of the team does his best to stand very tall and very still, she apparently decides that they aren’t quite strange enough to turn away and picks up her shiny black phone.

“Takamatsu-sama, your four o’clock’s here,” she says into it.  “It appears to be a group of boys. … Yes, sir, boys.  But they do have an appointment.”

She listens to her boss for another moment, then nods and turns her gaze on the lot of them.  It feels, to Kenjirou, like the gaze of a snake – as though she could drown out his voice merely by staring at him.  He’d like to take her down in a fight.

“You can go in,” she says.

All of them move at once.

The woman holds up one hand.  Her fingernails have been painted perfectly with black polish, not one spot untouched.  “There isn’t room for that many – two or three can go.”

Oohira steps forward, dragging Ushijima with him.  Goshiki steps forward.  Kawanishi steps forward.  Tendou and Yamagata and Semi step forward.

Kenjirou looks at this picture, all of his teammates refusing to give ground and a bored receptionist who, most likely, couldn’t stop them if she wanted to.

“We’re all going,” he says.

She stares at him – he stares back.  He wonders if anyone has ever thundered louder than a snake kami before.

“Fine,” the receptionist says finally.  “Whatever.  It’s that way.”

 

Takamatsu, Sakura Construction’s Head of Operations, is lean and hungry-looking, as though he’s never eaten a decent meal before in his life.  He has slicked hair, sideburns, and a tiny American flag on his desk, flying casually among his pens and pencils.  He reminds Kenjirou of a vulture, circling above a barren desert in search of carcasses to steal from.

“Good afternoon, boys,” he says.  He sits forward in his chair, setting his hands out in front of him on his hardwood desk.  “Please, sit.”  None of them sit.  “What can I do for you?”

“Your company is building a new apartment complex on an abandoned lot in Hinode,” Ushijima says.

“We certainly are,” Takamatsu replies, smiling wide enough to show his teeth.  (Several of them are gold.)  “I can’t promise any apartments yet, but I can give you details on square footage, amenities, maybe even prices if you’re committed –”

Kenjirou flexes his fingers to stop his hands from clenching into fists.

“We don’t want any apartments,” Ushijima interrupts.

“What?”  The smile drops from Takamatsu’s face like a kabuki mask discarded after a show.  “Then what do you want?”

“We want you to stop construction.”

“What?  Why?”

“And don’t just stop construction – put back the lot to the way it was before!” Goshiki cuts in.  Oohira gives him a Look, and Goshiki shuts his mouth, tightening it to one flat line.

Takamatsu’s eyes narrow.  “Is this some kind of prank?  That apartment complex is going to be a major profit source.  We’ve already devoted time, effort, and materials to it.  Construction isn’t going to _stop_ just because a bunch of kids ask –”

“It’s not just us,” Oohira says.  He reaches into the knapsack at his side and pulls out their petition.  Over five hundred signatures on twenty-five pieces of paper stapled together.  They convinced students, teachers, parents, even some people from the municipal government – Kenjirou and Semi marched into the local government office one day and refused to stop yelling about volleyball until they got twenty signatures.

Takamatsu flips through the petition, skimming down the columns of signatures, then turns to the statement on the first page. “By pretending us from playing volleyball, Sakura Construction is indirectly hindering Japan’s ability to develop its athletic skills and redeem itself in the eyes of the world,” he reads aloud.  “Is this for real?”

“We believe that volleyball is a sport of the future,” Oohira explains calmly.  The words sound natural, coming from him, flowing as easily as a mountain stream.  “It’s versatile, it’s competitive, it’s challenging – all of these are traits that we, as young people, should develop to help us succeed in this new post-war economy.  Taking away our ability to play volleyball is taking away our opportunities to develop valuable skills, making us less productive members of society.”

Takamatsu stares at Oohira, calculating, as though trying to figure out whether he could make a profit from this conversation.  Oohira holds his gaze steadily.  Kenjirou wonders how quickly he could punch this company executive.  What his face would look like, bruised blue and purple.  Whether his nose would be more appealing with blood dripping out of it.

“Look, kids,” Takamatsu finally says.  He isn’t smiling, and he isn’t calculating – without the self-satisfied smirk stretching his face he looks younger, more tired, as though he’s had to fight for his position the same way they’re fighting for their court.  “I like your guts, and I like your determination.  You got five hundred signatures – that’s impressive.  I admit it’s impressive.  But I can’t shut down construction on a huge project just because of a game.”

For a moment, there’s silence.  Kenjirou opens his mouth to spit venom – and then Oohira asks, “Can we have a moment to talk amongst ourselves, please?”

Takamatsu shrugs.  “Sure.”

The group forms a huddle at the back of the office, next to a towering potted plant that appears to have been carted in from a desert somewhere.

“He said it was impressive!” Goshiki whispers.  “That’s good, right?”

Kenjirou shushes him – even Goshiki’s whispers are loud, and letting Takamatsu hear their conversation is as good as pressing their stomachs to the ground in front of him.

“It’s good, but it looks like there’s no way we can convince him to give us the lot back,” Oohira replies.  “Should we switch to plan B?”

The others nod.  Plan B is risker, but it’s the best option they have now.

Oohira looks at Semi and says, “You explain that one – it was your idea.”

Semi gives him a thumbs up.  The group breaks up and returns to the front of the office, facing the desk.  But before Kenjirou walks all the way forward, Yamagata pulls him aside.

“Shirabu,” he hisses in Kenjirou’s ear.  “ _Calm down._  They’ve got this.”

Kenjirou bites his cheek hard.  Yamagata’s right.  He knows, intellectually, that Yamagata’s right.  But that doesn’t stop him from wanting to shoulder Semi aside and start snarling, wanting to terrify Takamatsu until he gives in.

Semi steps forward.  “We have an alternate suggestion,” he tells Takamatsu.  “Instead of stopping construction on the complex, you use extra materials and additional property to build a new gym with a volleyball court.  It wouldn’t be a difficult or expensive project – the gym would only need to be one large, open room with a hardwood floor, and maybe a closet for equipment.  We could help you design it, and we could advertise it and find other people to use it after it’s built.”

Takamatsu opens his mouth to reply, but Semi isn’t finished.  “Think how good this would look for your company.  Building a gym for students to learn a new sport – it’s better than donating money to charity.  You could charge people some small fee to use it for themselves.  You could use it to advertise the apartment complex, and any other projects you’re doing.  It would be a smart move.”

“It might be,” Takamatsu admits.  “You make a good argument.  But I still have a hard time understanding why this game – what do you call it, volley? – is so important.  You claim to be a team.  You practiced in the lot.  Fine.  But what do you have to show for all this practice?  What kind of team are you if you’ve never won anything?”

_We’re more of a team than you could ever imagine._

The words are clawing at the inside of Kenjirou’s throat.  He wants to shout, he wants to _scream._  How _dare_ this man – this businessman-vulture who can barely even remember the _name_ of volleyball – make judgements about what kind of team they are?

But Yamagata glances at him, Oohira stiffens but does not balk, and he knows he has to stay quiet.  This silence, this stalemate between arguments is the moment between a serve and a receive – Kenjirou has to trust that the players behind him will send him the ball.  He can’t look.  He can’t interfere.  He has to trust them.

“What if we _could_ win something?”

It’s Kawanishi – pale, quiet, slow-moving Kawanishi – stepping forward and meeting Takamatsu’s gaze.

“What if I told you that there’s a competition next month in Shibuya for high school volleyball teams that we were planning on applying to?  What if I told you there would be teams there from all over the country – not teams like us, but teams with coaches, and funding, and facilities?  What if I told you we could win anyway?”

Takamatsu leans forward in his chair, folds his hands together, props his chin on top.  “Well,” he says.  “That would certainly improve the situation.”

“So, if we win the tournament, you’ll build the gym?” Oohira asks.

“I’ll talk to the board of directors,” Takamatsu replies.  He glances at the door, but stays seated.

But Kenjirou’s father was a representative of the union at his factory, even when unions were discouraged by law, and Kenjirou has listened through the door to more meetings with executives than he can remember – he knows a _yes_ when he hears one.

“Thank you, sir,” Oohira says.  He steps forward and reaches out his hand.  Takamatsu shakes it.

And then, as if on cue, each of the others goes to shake as well.  First Ushijima, then Kawanishi, then Semi, then Tendou and Yamagata and Goshiki.  Kenjirou is last.  Takamatsu’s hand is oily, not unlike an eel, but his handshake is firm and steady.

 

“Since when did we apply for a competition in Shibuya?” Kenjirou demands, the moment the elevator door closes behind their group.

Kawanishi shrugs.  “My mom always said that research is the most important part of journalism.”

“But why didn’t you _tell_ us?”

He shrugs again.  “Forgot.”

“You _forgot_ to tell us about something that could potentially be _the key to convincing him?”_

He shrugs a third time.

Oohira starts laughing.

“Shirabu,” Semi says, starting to cackle, “your face is – your face is all – it’s bright red.”

Kenjirou ignores them and the heat in his face.  He looks at Kawanishi – quiet and lazy and annoying, but sarcastic and talented and smart as hell.  It occurs to him, suddenly, that next year – if they do this, and their team _has_ a next year – he and Kawanishi will be in charge.

Right now, he can’t think of anyone else he’d rather lead a team with.

Kenjirou takes a step forward, opens his arms, and throws them around Kawanishi.  The other second-year is several centimeters taller, not to mention skinny as a lamp post and twice as stiff, but after a moment, he relaxes, bringing his arms up to wind around Kenjirou’s waist.

When he steps back, the rest of the team is grinning, bright as though they’ve won their battle already.  Oohira is laughing, Tendou is bouncing in place, Goshiki is trying to give everyone simultaneous high fives.  The operator looks at them as though they all just crash-landed into the elevator on a flying saucer, but they don’t care.

“Now, we just need to win,” Kawanishi says.

Ushijima looks at him, then at the rest of them in turn.  “We will win.”

In that moment, it seems impossible not to believe him.

 

 

_Late October, 1948_

Practice gets hard, after that.

Not that practice wasn’t hard before – they’ve been pushing themselves and each other since the day Goshiki told them what volleyball is – but now that they have an actual goal to work towards, Eita watches their work ethic double and redouble, like rainwater filling a dry, cracking lakebed.

They string up some rope between two trees at a park in Yamagata’s neighborhood to approximate a court as best they can.  (He’s happy when he no longer has to take the train home after practice, but less happy when the entire rest of the team follows him home to use the bathroom.)  Practices become strictly scheduled, with warm-ups, drills, and four-on-four games all planned to the minute by Oohira.  But when they’ve finished everything on Oohira’s schedule, nobody ever leaves. Instead, they hold free practice late into the night.

Goshiki insists that Shirabu toss him one ball after another, practicing straight spikes and cross spikes and quick sets until he can spike the ball from any angle, maneuvering around blocks as though they’re mere air.  Shirabu complains about Goshiki’s impatience, but sets for him every time, his tosses growing consistent as the rising and falling of the sun.  Yamagata and Oohira go after receive practice with a vengeance, making a contest out of who can send back more in one afternoon – they usually play to one hundred.  Ushijima practices serves into the darkening sky and beneath the twinkling stars.  He used to practice a hundred a day, but now he practices two hundred, three hundred, four hundred.  Sometimes, after a particularly successful ace, Tendou yells, _Miracle boy Wakatooooshi!_ so loud, Eita thinks the whole city must be able to hear him.  Even Kawanishi puts in extra effort, blocking for Ushijima, Goshiki, and sometimes Satori until his hands are red and raw.  

And Eita … Eita isn’t certain what to practice.  He’s always been a setter.  He’s always loved being a setter, has been enthralled by the intense precision of sending tosses exactly where they need to go and the burning victory of tearing down walls for a spiker.  In four-on-fours, he’ll face Shirabu across the net, quirk up the corners of his mouth in a smirk, and challenge him wordlessly - _this time, I’m going to beat you._

But at this tournament, they’re not going to play four-on-fours.  It’s going to be one full team against another.  And a full team isn’t eight people - it’s seven.  Three wing spikers, two middle blockers, one libero, one setter.  One setter.  There’s no room for two.

Shirabu is angry, emotional, easily riled up.  But he’s smart, and he’s consistent, and he’s strong - and he practices so hard, working on quicks with Ushijima and Tendou and Kawanishi and Goshiki until he can set precisely the way they need him to.  He’s built up his tosses for years.  Eita’s good, Eita’s fast, Eita wants to stand on the court, but he knows that which setter the team needs - he has to step back.

He never tells Shirabu any of this.  He isn’t even sure Shirabu realizes that one of them won’t be able to play in the tournament.  But he stops practicing sets as much, and instead watches his friends practice.  They’re all improving incredibly.  They’re all improving without him.

“Hey.  Semi.  Don’t think I’ve seen you pick up a ball all afternoon.”

Tendou is standing in front of the tree that Eita’s been sitting against. His arms are crossed over his chest, and the expression on his face is a little reminiscent of Oohira.  Eita thought that, if he just sat here and watched the games, nobody would notice.  Apparently, he was wrong.

“What is there for me to practice?” Eita asks.  “It’s not like I’m going to play in the tournament.”

Tendou frowns.  With his eyes narrowed like that, he looks like a lizard, if lizards could have bright red hair slicked back with grease.

“Why wouldn’t you play in the tournament?” he demands.  “You’re part of the team, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but we don’t need two setters, and Shirabu’s better than I am,” Eita explains.  He’s known this for weeks, but it still hurts to say it - as though he’s slicing himself open.

Tendou takes a few steps forward, so that he’s standing directly in front of Eita, and sticks out his hand.  Eita doesn’t understand why - he’s not about to go practice _now_ \- but Tendou doesn’t move.  Eita thinks sometimes that Tendou must be able to glue himself to the floor, when he gets determined about something.  It’s annoying as hell.

But finally, Eita gives in and takes the hand.  Tendou pulls him to his feet in one swift, painful motion.

“That’s better,” Tendou says.  “Now.  Remember when we first met?  When you yelled at me for not talking until I screamed and ran out?”

Eita nods.  He’s never been able to forget - has heard that scream in his nightmares.

“I was terrible,” he tells Tendou.  “I - I still feel bad about it.”

Tendou shakes his head.  “You _were_ terrible,” he agrees, “but you shouldn’t still feel bad.  You talking to me - you forced me to think about stuff I was refusing to think about.  Why my family being dead meant I had to stop living.  It took me a while to get over it, still, but you gave me … you gave me a push.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.  A really harsh push.  Like, you pushed me off a cliff.”

“A steep cliff with rocks at the bottom,” Eita agrees.

“Right.  But my point is,” Tendou goes on, “you might not be able to play as a setter, but you can give our whole team pushes like that.  I read in one of Goshiki’s articles once about a game where a team was losing and everyone’s moral was shit, but this guy came in and replaced one of the spikers when it was his turn to serve and served an ace - and that completely turned the flow of the game.  The article called him a pinch server.  And your serves are good like that, Semi.  They’re totally unpredictable.  If we were ever losing, you could come in and get us points.”

Eita has a hard time believing that their team would ever be in danger of losing, but he can see the appeal of the position.  He wouldn’t play much, but when he stepped onto the court, it would always be at a crucial moment.  Everyone would be counting on him.

“And I can take notes on how shitty you’re all doing on the court,” he suggests.

“Like a really mean coach!” Tendou exclaims.  “Semi, you’re a genius!  Come on, we gotta tell the others!”

He runs back to the court shouting something about serves and motivation and pinching.  Eita brushes some dirt off of his shorts, then follows, picking up a stray volleyball on the way.

_Pinch server._  He likes the sound of that.

 

 

_Early November, 1948_

Satori starts calling all of them miracles.

His nickname for Ushijima is old by now, practiced as the route they run together every morning.  Satori likes to stand at the edge of the park when Ushijima is serving beneath the stars and watch his long shadow arch back, leap into the air, and lunge forward.  He stops looking like a person, after serving for long enough – he seems larger than life, more powerful than life, like a kami of the mountain taken human form.  Satori’s yells of _Miracle boy Wakatoooooshi!_ tear forth from his throat then, as though those words were simmering inside him, waiting for the perfect moment to erupt.

Ushijima’s nickname is old, practiced.  But the others fall into place new and shiny in the weeks before the competition, _Miracle boy Tsutomuuu!_ after Goshiki hits a spike almost horizontally to the net and _Miracle boy Eitaaaaaa!_ after Semi serves his third unhittable ball in a row and _Miracle boy Taichiiiiiiii!_ after Kawanishi gets one of Ushijima’s spikes with a kill block.  Satori isn’t sure where the cheers come from – he doesn’t think about them beforehand, they just tear from his throat in loud cries, like raindrops tearing open heavy clouds.

Sometimes, Satori thinks that this is how he’s making up for his year of silence.  All of his admiration and gratitude and pride built up, and now it’s pouring out when his team needs it most, in cheers and hoots and yells.  He raises his voice, lengthens his vowels, tilts his head back towards the sky.

And then, one chilly afternoon in early November, Ushijima points out during a water break that Satori never cheers for himself.

“But wouldn’t that be defeating the purpose?” Satori stammers in reply around the mouth of his water bottle.  “Or bad sportsmanship, or something.”

Ushijima shrugs.  “You cheer for me and the others when we play well.  It is logical that you cheer for yourself when you play well..”

Ushijima is hard to argue with, so the next time Satori manages a block – of Oohira’s back attack, no less – he throws his head back, closes his eyes, and bellows, “MIRACLE BOY SATORIIIIII!”

He feels as though he’s on top of the world.  As though he’s flying.  As though he’s invincible.

He wonders if this is how his friends feel, when he cheers for them.

Satori opens his eyes – and Ushijima is smiling at him.

 

 

_November 17, 1948_

One afternoon in November, Kawanishi approaches Satori after practice.

“I need your help,” he says.

Satori pauses in putting on his jacket, one arm stuck halfway up the sleeve.  It’s starting to get chilly, but they continue to practice in shorts and T-shirts, relying on body heat and exercise to keep warm.  Satori finds it exhilarating – he’s usually the first one to shed his jacket during warm-ups.

“What’s up?” he asks Kawanishi.  “Do you want my blocking advice again?  Because I always tell you the same thing, you rely –”

“Rely too heavily on logic and not enough on instinct, I know,” Kawanishi finishes for him.  “Have you ever considered the fact that maybe we just have different blocking styles?”

“Nope!”  Satori tugs his jacket on all the way and grins at his kouhai.  “And even if that _were_ true, mine is better.”

Kawanishi sighs the long-suffering sigh of someone who has had this conversation once a month for the past two years.  “Whatever.  I need your help with something _not related to blocking.”_

“Oh!  Well, you should’ve said so in the first place!”

Kawanishi glares at him, and Satori stifles a cackle.  Harassing Kawanishi is one of his favorite hobbies, after provoking Shirabu and getting Ushijima to smile.

“Look, just – be serious for a second.  Please.”

“Okay, okay.”  Satori crosses his arms over his chest.  “Serious.”

“I need you to come up with a name for our team.”

Satori’s arms drop to his sides.  “A _what_?”

“A name,” Kawanishi repeats.  “The competition registration paperwork asks that we provide a name for our team.  I put down ‘Hinode Volleyball’, but apparently since we aren’t officially affiliated with the town, that doesn’t work.”

“You couldn’t come up with a name yourself?” Satori asks.

Kawanishi shrugs.  “I thought about it.  Made a list.  But I realized that all my ideas were basically variations on ‘Ushijima’s All-Stars,’ and I don’t think he’d like that.”

Satori pictures the eight of them in bright uniforms with _USHIJIMA’S ALL-STARS_ printed across the front.  It’s pretty funny, but Kawanishi’s right – Ushijima would never agree to it.

“Why didn’t you ask him, then?” he says.  “He _is_ basically our captain.”

“Oh, he’s officially our captain,” Kawanishi confirms.  “I put his name down on the form.  But there’s no way he could name the team – can you imagine?  He’d want us just to be called ‘Volleyball.’”

Satori can just see it – Ushijima, completely stone-faced, introducing the team to some official referee with, “This is my volleyball team, Volleyball.”  He huffs a laugh at the idea.

“Yeah, okay,” he agrees.  “But still, why me?  Oohira’s more of a leader, Goshiki’s more creative –”

“You’re the best with words,” Kawanishi interrupts.  “You always know the right thing to say to help get someone motivated.  The petition was my idea, but it’s persuasive because you helped write it.  Plus, you’re always looking up kanji meanings and trying to figure out English translations and stuff – I don’t know.  I thought you might be able to come up with something cool.”

Satori grins.  “Oh, I can _definitely_ come up with something cool.”

“Then why didn’t you say so earlier?” Kawanishi asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I wanted to make sure you weren’t just asking me so that you could immediately make fun of whatever I suggested.”

“C’mon, Tendou.  I’m not _you._ ”

 

 

_November 18, 1948_

The next day at lunch, Satori pulls out his notebook.

“I have an announcement,” he says.

“You’re pregnant,” Semi immediately guesses.

“What?” Satori practically yelps.  “ _No._  Semi, what the fuck.”

“Ushijima’s pregnant,” Semi suggests, smirking.

“That is biologically improbable,” Ushijima tells him.

“But not _impossible._ Kawanishi, what do you -”

“ _Semi_ ,” Satori cuts him off.

“Okay.”  Semi leans back against the wall and begins to unwrap his bento.  “You have an announcement.”

“I do.”  Satori clears his throat, opens his notebook to the correct page.  “Yesterday, Kawanishi asked me to come up with a name for our team, because we need one to officially register for the competition.  Last night, I flipped through dictionaries and looked up etymologies until I had come up with name ideas.  I have several, but the best one is –”

A rattling noise begins to echo around the room.  Satori realizes after a few seconds that it’s Goshiki, slapping his thighs rhythmically at a rapidly increasing tempo.

“Goshiki, what the fuck,” Shirabu says.

“It’s a drumroll!” Goshiki exclaims.  “To make the announcement more dramatic!”

Satori grins at Goshiki – he loves the kid’s chutzpah.  “The best one is … Shiratorizawa!”

“Shiratorizawa,” Oohira echoes.  It sounds slightly strange, in his voice – but that might just be because Satori said it out loud to himself about a hundred times last night.  “What does it mean?”

“Well, _shiratori_ is swan,” Tendou explains, “and the _zawa_ just sounds cool.  I picked swans as our mascot because they look graceful and beautiful, but if you mess with them, they’ll fuck you up.”

“I like it,” Ushijima announces.

Goshiki bounces.  “It’s fun to cheer, I think!  Shira-tori-zawa!  Shira-tori-zawa!”

“Shira-tori-zawa!  Shira-tori-zawa!” Yamagata joins in.

And then Oohira joins in, and then Shirabu, and Semi, and Kawanishi, and even Ushijima – and then Satori is surrounded by a chorus of sound, filling the classroom.  He closes his eyes and lets the cheer lift him up, more powerful than any jetpack or man-made wings.

Satori has been reading superhero comics for years, ever since he picked up the first issue of Captain America at a train station in Tokyo.  Superheroes fascinated him – not people, but _more_ than people, larger than life people.

Satori is starting to think that he doesn’t need superheroes any more.  He has something better.

_Shira-tori-zawa!  Shira-tori-zawa!  Shira-tori-zawa!_

They’re going to win this competition.  They have to.

 

 

_November 27, 1948_

The All-Japan High School Volleyball Competition is held in an enormous gymnasium in Shibuya.

Tsutomu repeats that phrase to himself a few times, mouthing it silently as he steps into the gymnasium and follows his teammates.   _All-Japan High School Volleyball Competition._  He remembers being ten years old, hiding up in his room and poring over articles about this incredible new sport in which players soar into the air, dreaming about one day being able to leap over the ground the same way they did.  And now, here he is.   _All-Japan High School Volleyball Competition._  With a team – not just _a_ team, but the best team.  The greatest team he ever could have dreamed up.

He wishes he could go back in time and tell his younger self about these shiny wood floors, this sound of volleyballs bouncing and people shouting, this smell of air salonpas.   _You’ll make it,_ he would tell himself.   _We’ll make it._

“Hey, Goshiki!”  Shirabu grabs Tsutomu’s shirt and yanks him forward.  He hadn’t even realized he’d been falling behind.  “Get a move on!”

Tsutomu looks down at his shirt – it’s a uniform jersey, white and purple, with _SHIRATORIZAWA_ embroidered across the front.  The purple is the same color as Ushijima’s old plastic ball, the one they’d used in games before Tsutomu bought an official one.  Yamagata had given them all these uniforms the day before – none of them had even known he knew how to sew.  The stitching is uneven in places and the embroidered letters are larger on one side than the other, but Tsutomu loves the uniforms.  He’s seriously considering never taking his off.

“Hey!” he cries out at Shirabu.  “Don’t do that, you’ll stretch it out!”

“If you don’t want him to pull on your jersey, keep up with the group,” Oohira says over his shoulder.  Tsutomu realizes he’s attracting stares – he’s fallen behind again.  He sprints a few paces to keep up.

Oohira and Kawanishi lead the group through a veritable maze of corridors, all painted in silver with only white and blue-lettered signs distinguishing one hallway from the next.  It reminds Tsutomu of a beehive, only instead of bees, it’s occupied by volleyball players – all dressed in blue and green and gold.  They have jerseys with numbers on them, and matching water bottles, and older men with stern faces and crossed arms standing by – it takes Tsutomu a moment to realize that those must be _coaches._  

But once he gets over the novelty of official, school-sponsored teams, he starts to look at the individual players.  Many of them are tall, lean, muscular – but, he notices with a glint of pride, none are as tall or as muscular as Ushijima.  Many look ready for a fight, but he thinks Shirabu could take them.  Many seem prepared for all eventualities, but none are carrying the same type of practical bag as Oohira – a small pouch that ties around his waist.  (He calls it a fanny pack.  Tsutomu thinks it’s the coolest bag he’s ever seen.)

The point is, Tsutomu thinks, his team could take any of these teams.  Easy.  That decided, he tilts his chin up and struts proudly.  He nearly walks into a short, orange-haired kid who squawks at him indignantly about _not looking where he’s going_ , but that’s beside the point.

After what must be hours of walking, the group arrives at a check-in table, manned by two middle-aged women with short haircuts and official-looking nametags.

“Are you here to sign in?” the woman on the right asks.

The team nods.

“Great!  So which of you is the captain?”

Everyone takes a step back.  Looks pointedly at Ushijima.  Ushijima stares at them, as though they all just announced that, actually, this is a chip-eating competition and only Yamagata is qualified.

“Did you tell him?” Tendou whispers to Kawanishi.

“No, I thought you told him,” Kawanishi whispers back.

“It appears that … I am,” Ushijima says slowly.

“Okay, name and team name?” the woman on the left asks, sheaths of paper at the ready.

“Ushijima Wakatoshi, Shiratorizawa.”

“Shiratorizawa … Ah, here you are.”  The woman hands Ushijima several papers.  “There’s your schedule, your bracket, and your map.  You’ll be in locker room twelve, up there on the left,” she adds, pointing.

Everyone bows, and they follow her directions to the room.

 

They have a locker room.  They have _their own_ locker room.  The very concept is so exciting, Tsutomu is barely prepared for seeing the actual room – he nearly jumps into the ceiling when they walk inside, as it is.  He darts around the room, examining metal lockers and wooden benches and the door in the corner that connects to an adjoining bathroom.

“Calm down,” Semi tells him.  “It’s literally only a room with lockers in it.”

Tsutomu does not calm down.  Tsutomu may never be calm again.  They have a whole room just to change and keep their stuff in – like a real, professional team!  Does this mean they’re a real, professional team now?

“I think this was the room of the national women’s swim team,” Yamagata says, peering inside one of the lockers at what is, he points out to Tsutomu, old graffiti from its previous user.

“Oh.”  A used swim team locker room is not quite as exciting, but Tstomu still thinks the room is cool.  He doesn’t have to change (as he’s been in his jersey since four o’clock this morning), so he just stuffs his gym bag into a random locker and starts stretching.

“Why did you make me the captain?” Ushijima asks Kawanishi.  He’s standing next to the blocker as he changes, stretching out his left leg on one of the benches.

Kawanishi turns to look at Ushijima, incredulous.  “Are you serious?”

“I’m always serious,” Ushijima says.  “You did the paperwork.  You put me down as the captain.  Why?”

“Because you’re our captain.  You’ve always been our captain.”  Kawanishi turns and heads to the bathroom.  Ushijima starts to follow until Oohira puts a hand on his arm, a reminder that following people to the bathroom is generally frowned upon in polite society (which they aren’t in, really, but still.)

Ushijima looks at Oohira blankly, as though he’s honestly confused.  “Why me?  You’re the most prepared.  Semi and Kawanishi are the best strategists.  Tendou is the loudest.  Goshiki knows the most about volleyball.”

“It’s because we’d all follow you to the ends of the earth,” Oohira says simply.  “Now come on, Captain.  Give us a good pre-tournament speech,” he adds, shoving Ushijima to the center of the room.

“But I didn’t know to prepare a pre-tournament speech,” Ushijima protests.  He doesn’t move, though, Tsutomu notes.

“You don’t need preparation,” Tendou says.  “Just speak from the heart.”

Ushijima stares at him.

“Tell us we’re the best team ever and we’re gonna win no matter what,” Yamagata suggests.

“But we are not the best team ever.  We have never had any real coaching or played in any real games.”

“Tell us why we’re going to win despite that,” Oohira says.

Ushijima considers that.  He stands still in the center of the locker room, hands at his sides.  His hand-sewn uniform fits him perfectly, jersey hanging just below his waist and shorts just reaching his knees.  On him, it looks like a real uniform, like the ones in the articles and slides Tsutomu has been looking at for years.  Tsutomu has a sudden image of Ushijima in a few years – a little taller, a little more confident, but just as imposing as he is now, leading a team of players as good as he is.

Ushijima begins to speak.  He doesn’t raise his voice.  He doesn’t have to.  Everyone stops what they’re doing and listens.

“We have never had any real coaching or played in any real games.  But we have practiced.  We have been playing volleyball for over three years, and we’re all much better than we were when we started.  Each of us has worked on an individual skill - setting, blocking, receiving, serving, spiking.  We’ve looked at slides and read articles to learn from experts as well as we can.  We’ve played with and against each other perfecting those skills.  All of that work has lead up to today.

“We will win these games because we have to, and because we are ready.  If each of us performs the way I know he can - if Shirabu’s tosses are high and consistent, if Tendou and Kawanishi block our opponents’ spikes, if Oohira and Yamagata keep the ball in play until we can score, if Goshiki hits spikes our opponents never see coming, if Semi sends over untouchable float serves – if all of these pieces fall into place, no other team will have a chance.  We are the individual pieces of a large organism.  If each of us does his job perfectly, we will fight as one unit.

“Do not feel nervous.  Do not feel underprepared.  Do not feel lesser.  We are strong.  We will win.”

Ushijima never lies.  If he says they will win, they win.

“Shira-tori-zawa!” Tendou shouts.  “Shira-tori-zawa!  Shira-tori-zawa!”

Tsutomu joins in, and soon, the whole team is cheering – loud enough that the whole stadium must be able to hear them.

“Shiratorizawa?” asks an attendant, poking her head into the locker room.

“YES!” the team roars.

She smiles kindly at them.  “Your first game starts soon.  It’s your turn on court number two to warm up.”

Tsutomu is so caught up in cheering, he almost forgets to follow her.  Oohira has to grab his jersey and drag him along.

His jersey is definitely going to get stretched out.  But when Tsutomu approaches the court they get to play on, he can’t bring himself to care.  He’s in an enormous room – bigger than the entirety of Hinode Public School – with a ceiling so high, Tsutomu has to crane his head back to look at it, and lights so bright, they nearly blind him when he looks at them.  The floor is shiny wood, much smoother than the asphalt they practiced on.  In the center is a dohyou that Tsutomu recognizes from pictures of sumo matches, but the areas on either side of it have been set up as volleyball courts, nets strung up and lines painted on the floor.  The nets are no higher than the one in their old court, Tsutomu notes with pride.  They’re clean, though – bright white, as though they came to life straight from a magazine.  In the corners, carts are stacked all the way to the top with brand-new volleyballs.  And all the sides of the room are lined with stands – hundreds, maybe even a thousand metal seats, ready to be filled with spectators.

The seats are barely a quarter filled right now, with a few parents and schoolmates of the other teams, but Tsutomu closes his eyes and imagines them bursting – imagines them calling out his name, louder than thunder.   _Go-shi-ki!  Go-shi-ki!  Go-shi-ki!_

Shirabu is looking at Tsutomu funny.  It takes Tsutomu a moment to realize that this is because he’s been screeching, long and high pitched, once they set foot on the court.

“You have fifteen minutes to warm up,” the attendant tells them.  “Stretch, jog, do some drills, whatever you need.”

Ushijima bows to her, and the rest of the team quickly follows his lead.  She wishes them good luck and then leaves, presumably to collect another team.  The upperclassmen all look at each other – unsure of how to warm up here, on this shiny floor in the midst of this mass of unfamiliar people.

But Tsutomu isn’t unsure.  In fact, he’s never been more sure in his life.

He runs out into the center of the court, shouting as loudly as he can.

“Goshiki, you’re embarrassing the team!” Oohira yells.  But Tendou follows him out, and then Shirabu follows Tendou, and Semi follows Shirabu, and Yamagata follows Semi, and then they’re all lapping the court and yelling, warming up just like they’re in a tiny, old abandoned lot in the middle of Hinode.  Ushijima leads them through familiar stretches and drills.  He even manages to get them one of the carts of volleyballs so that they can run a couple of practice quicks.  (Tsutomu isn’t entirely certain how that happens, except that he sees his captain stride over to the officials on the sidelines and point at a cart, and then the officials back away slowly.)

The stadium is loud as they warm up – Tsutomu can hear a cacophony of people shouting, balls bouncing, even a couple of what he thinks must be camera shutters clicking.  Nobody is paying much attention to the team on court number one, doing the same drills that several other teams must have already run that morning.

And then, Ushijima strides to the back corner of the court.  His head is held high.  His expression is unreadable.  He leans back, he tosses the ball above his head, he pulls his arm back, he shifts his weight, and he _spikes_ –

And the ball soars in a long arc across the court to land on the floor with a clean _smack._  An untouchable ace.

The stadium goes silent.  Tsutomu can hear Ushijima breathing, calm and steady.

Tendou yells, “Miracle boy Wakatoshiiii!” – familiar as the feel of a volleyball between Tsutomu’s fingers.  He grins, and the rest of his team is grinning back.

 

They win the first game in two sets.

The other team is well-prepared, sure.  They’re a team of incredible blockers, half of their starters as tall as Ushijima, with this wild setter who tosses the ball so high, Tsutomu nearly gets distracted watching it in the first few points.  But while their blocks are strong, they’re predictable – by the end of the first set, Tsutomu’s gotten the hang of maneuvering, sending the ball at tight angles just inside the net and looking for space between two blockers’ hands.

Ushijima doesn’t need to maneuver.  Ushijima just slams right through, like a battering ram up against a wall made of delicate silk.  Shirabu’s tosses are consistent, Yamagata doesn’t miss a single receive, Oohira gets in a couple of back attacks, Tendou taunts the other team with his infallible guess blocking, and Semi’s jump float serve scores them three points in a row.  Kawanishi doesn’t even break a sweat.

“We’ll get you next time,” one of the blockers, a brown-haired boy with an expression that reminds Tsutomu of Shirabu, tells them after they score their last point (a spike from Tendou that landed just out of reach of their libero’s fingertips.)

Tendou smirks wide and dangerous, like a demon in a scary story parents use to warn their children against going into the woods at night.  “Sure you will.”

Tsutomu walks off the court feeling ten meters tall.  Like he could crush volleyballs with his bare hands, or race a hundred kilometers at his fastest pace, or play another five games just like that.

“Don’t get too confident,” Oohira warns him when he sees Tsutomu’s grin.

“Aw, c’mon,” Yamagata puts in.  He leans over and ruffles Tsutomu’s hair, leaving it sticking up in several directions like his own.  “Let the kid celebrate.  That was some game.”

“Alright,” Oohira relents.  “I suppose it was.”

They watch a couple of other games from the stands, try to guess which team they’ll be up against next, and get lunch from a convenience store next to the stadium.  Tsutomu realizes halfway to the counter, his arms full of pork buns and protein snacks, that he left his wallet at home by accident.  Luckily, Oohira has a package of rice crackers in his special bag, so Tsutomu eats those along with some extra food stolen from his teammates.  (He manages to snag half of Yamagata’s bag of chips before Yamagata notices and insists that Tsutomu pay him back the next day.)

By the time they get back to the stadium, it’s nearly time for their next game: against a team in bright red uniforms, with a captain with hair that looks like he just rolled out of bed and a quiet setter even shorter than Yamagata.  This game goes in two sets, too.  The other team is good at receives, good at connecting – they play long points, volleying back and forth over the net for minutes before a spike from Ushijima or a block from Tendou finally breaks them.

Yamagata hates this team, Tsutomu can tell – he keeps eying their libero, a short-statured boy with light brown hair and a perpetually aggravated expression, as though he wants to punch the other boy in the face, take him out of the game for good.  But in between sets, Oohira takes Yamagata aside and says something to him.  Something about _persisting_ and _being the better man._  Tsutomu doesn’t hear much.  But after that, Yamagata plays with renewed energy, his eyes locked onto the ball the way Tsutomu remembers they were during their very first practice, when Yamagata refused to leave the court until he could receive Ushijima’s serve.  The final point is won because Yamagata dives to save a ball that would’ve landed in the very back of the court, just shy of the boundary line.

When the game is called, Tsutomu skids over to Yamagata and high-fives the libero so hard, his palm goes red.

The tournament is split over three days.  There are two rounds the first day, two the second day, and a championship match on the third.  The third day is a Monday, so if Shiratorizawa makes it to the final round, they’ll all get to miss school.  They have advanced permission to miss their classes, though, even the third-years – Kinomori-sensei, the junior high 3A teacher, persuaded the principal to make it an excused absence.

Tsutomu thinks about that, the night after their first two games.  Missing school.  Taking the train into the city.  Striding into the stadium with his head held high, listening to the cheering of the people in the stands – cheering for him, cheering for his team.  They can do it.  Today, they played real volleyball, against real teams, and they _won._  Tsutomu wishes that every moment of the games were recorded, so that he can relive them over and over again.

He replays receives and blocks and spikes in his mind until he finally falls asleep.

 

 

_November 28, 1948_

On the second day of the tournament, Tsutomu pushes into the stadium ahead of the rest of his team.

Even though he was just here yesterday, he still gapes at the corridors and the signs and the teams with their coaches and their colorful uniforms as though he’s seeing them for the first time.  Some part of him was afraid that all of this would disappear overnight – or that he’d wake up and realize this was all a dream concocted by his ten-year-old self, that the war was still going and he’d never found a team.

But the stadium is still here.  Volleyball is still here.  His team is still behind him, yelling at him to _slow down_ and _save his energy_ and _our locker room is the other way._  There’s no way this could be a dream, anyway, Tsutomu thinks as he bangs open the door to their locker room – _their locker room_.  It’s too incredible to be something he dreamed up.

Their game that morning is the first one to go to three sets.  Shiratorizawa is up against a team from downtown Tokyo with black and white uniforms that remind Tsutomu of the pattern of an owl’s feathers.  They’re led by a spiker who yells almost as loud as Tendou and beams almost as wide as Tsutomu, with strange, dyed silver hair that sticks up as though he was electrocuted when he was younger and never quite recovered.  He spikes as powerfully as Ushijima and as unpredictably as Tsutomu, but he’s unreliable – his serves miss the court just as often as they land untouchable, and his blocks let balls through just as often as they kill spikes.  Shiratorizawa wears him down slowly and with difficulty, sneaking balls through when he’s at the back of the court and getting the ball to Ushijima at all costs.

After that game, the opposing team doesn’t trudge off the court sullenly after their final handshake.  Or, most of them do – but their ace runs up to the net afterwards, directs his million-watt smile at Ushijima.

“Hey!  You were really cool out there!  I’m Bokuto!  What’s your name!”

“Ushijima,” Ushijima answers.  He looks at Oohira, clearly unprepared for this turn of events.  Oohira just shrugs.

“Your spikes are super powerful, Ushijima!” Bokuto continues.  “I’ve never seen anything like them!  How did you learn that?  What did your coach have you do?”

“I don’t have a coach,” Ushijima tells him.  “But I practice a lot.”

Bokuto’s eyes go wide – he looks like an owl peering into a brightly lit forest, looking for a place to nest.  “No coach … But you’re so good …”

“Bokuto-san!” the team’s setter calls from the edge of the court.  “We need to get going!”

Bokuto looks to his setter, then back to Ushijima.  “I gotta go sorry bye!” he shouts over his shoulder as he dashes off the court.  “But I hope we meet again in college, Ushijima!”

Ushijima watches him go with an expression even more unreadable than before.

“Do people play volleyball in college?” he asks Tsutomu as they walk off the court.

Tsutomu can’t remember reading anything about Japanese college volleyball – but if the ace of another team is planning on playing volleyball in college, it must exist.

“I guess so,” he says.

Lunch that day is convenience store fare and strategy.  Semi has been sitting out for most of their games, only coming in to replace Shirabu when it’s his turn to serve, and he’s been taking notes on all of them.

“You’re all getting lax,” he says between bites of dried seaweed.  “Ushijima, you can’t just assume that Oohira and Yamagata will receive every ball when you’re in the back – you have to be prepared to receive yourself.  Shirabu, you have to help Ushijima maneuver around blocks – you saw what the other team’s setter was doing in the last match, changing his tosses to fit his spiker’s needs.  Consistency is good, but accuracy is better.  Kawanishi, you have to move faster.  Don’t rely on your height.  Yamagata, don’t try to get every single ball – watch to make sure that it isn’t going out before you dive …”

Tsutomu listens attentively, trying to memorize every point of commentary.  They don’t have coaches giving them constant pointers, so this is the best they can do to stay competitive.  Tsutomu’s starting to feel like a god on the court, like he can spike any ball – Semi’s no-nonsense voice is reminding him that he’s only human, and invincibility takes effort.

“I think our best strategy, if all else fails,” Semi concludes, “is to get the ball to Ushijima.  He’s the strongest, and we’ve yet to see a block his spikes can’t crack.  We can’t do this for every point, because he might get tired –”

“I won’t get tired,” Ushijima interrupts.

Everyone stares at him, trying to gauge if he’s bluffing.  But even the thought is preposterous – Ushijima never bluffs.  If he says he can do this, he can.

“Okay.  So that’s the strategy,” Semi says.  “Get the ball to Ushijima.  Do your parts perfectly – like the captain said yesterday, we have to work like a single organism.”

The team nods, and they finish their lunch in silence.

Their next game is their most difficult yet.  This team, unlike the others they’ve played and most of the others they’ve watched, doesn’t have a singular strategy, a strength that all of its players rally around.  Or perhaps, Tsutomu thinks as he watches the team’s long-haired ace slam a back attack past Yamagata, this team’s strength is their unpredictability – whenever he thinks Shiratorizawa has overcome one move, they come up with another.  It’s as though they’re evolving their game before Tsutomu’s very eyes.

This team’s most fascinating member is not its ace, or its setter, or its libero, but a tiny middle blocker with bright orange hair who leaps above the net so high he almost appears to fly – like the spiker in the slide Tsutomu had shown his friends on the first day they played volleyball.  A set into the game, Tsutomu realizes he recognizes the blocker.  He bumped into the kid during the first day of the tournament – thought he was someone’s little brother.  Tsutomu marvels now at how wrong he was.

This kid – tiny number ten – leaps and sprints and never seems to lose energy, despite how hard he must have to work to play on the same level as his teammates.  But at the same time, he distracts his opponents from the other members of his team – from the broad-shouldered captain who receives as though it’s what he was born to do, from the brilliant setter who tosses with pinpoint accuracy that has Shirabu sneering, from the tall spectacled blocker who manages, in the middle of the third set, to kill one of Ushijima’s spikes.

This game is difficult because of the other team’s unpredictability, but it’s also what allows Shiratorizawa to win.  While their opponents try out new formations and libero sets and synchronized attacks, Shiratorizawa relies on Semi’s strategy: getting the ball to Ushijima at all costs.  Their rhythm is familiar, all their pieces moving together with the smoothness of clockwork and the force of a typhoon – it wears down their opponents, whose attacks are rough around the edges, uncertain, as though they’re trying out some of their plays for the first time.

Tsutomu wins the final point of this game.  It’s a quick attack that he and Shirabu have practiced thousands of times, sending the ball straight to the back corner of the opposite court, where it looks like it’s heading out but bounces just inside the lines.  The tiny middle blocker dives for it, but even he isn’t quite fast enough – his fingers graze the edge of the ball.

Tsutomu expects him to be angry, when they meet across the net after the game.  He expects the blocker to be resentful.  But he grabs Tsutomu’s hand and shakes it vigorously, as though they’re close friends.

“That was incredible,” he tells Tsutomu.  “You’re incredible.”

Tsutomu feels his face heat up.  “I – I think you’re incredible, too!” he shouts.  His entire team turns to stare at him.  He ducks his head, but can’t hide the redness now spreading to his ears.

“Really?” the other kid asks.  “But – your spikes –”

“You jump so _high_!” Tsutomu squawks.  “Like you’re touching the sun!”

“Yeah, well, you – you – wait one second!”  The blocker drops Tsutomu’s hand – he tries not to miss the lost warmth – and darts to the edge of the court, then returns a moment later with a slip of paper.

“My address,” he explains, pressing it into Tsutomu’s hand.  “We should write letters!  And talk about volleyball stuff!  But don’t think this means we’re friends,” he adds, narrowing his eyes in a way that almost reminds Tsutomu of Shirabu, when he’s concentrating on a toss.  “Because we aren’t.  We’re rivals.  I’m going to beat you next time.”

With that, the boy turns and runs off – leaving Tsutomu a crumpled piece of paper with _Hinata Shouyou, Middle Blocker, Karasuno High School, 164cm_ and an address in Miyagi scrawled in black marker.

That night, Tsutomu’s thoughts are split between replays of the games that day and attempted calculations of how long it would take to get to Miyagi, what the train ticket would cost, how Hinata Shouyou’s face would look if Tsutomu showed up at his front door.

 

 

_November 29, 1948_

They make it to the championship match.

Tsutomu was expecting it.  He knows how good his teammates are, knows how much they’ve practiced, knows how secure their strategy is.  But it still comes as a shock to walk onto the court on the final day of the tournament, to see his team at the top of the giant bracket on the wall next to the entrance and a sign reading _FINALS_ above the scoreboard at court number one.  When Shiratorizawa walks onto the court to warm up, the stands thunder with applause – nobody from Hinode is here, but people from other schools have heard the story of a team without a coach, a team without funding, a team fighting to prove their sport worthy, and have started to learn their names.

Wait.  If nobody from Hinode is here, who is that woman in a long skirt in the fourth row who looks suspiciously like Kinomori-sensei?  Who is that old man sitting next to her who has the same kind eyes and wide smile as Oohira?  Who is that woman in a blue jacket – oh.

“Oka-san!” Tsutomu shouts, waving up at the stands wildly.  “Oka-san!  I didn’t know you were coming!”

Tsutomu’s mother smiles down at him – smiles all the way to her eyes, the way Tsutomu hasn’t seen her smile since his father disappeared.

“Of course I came,” she calls down at him.  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

 

Tsutomu watches their opponents as they warm up.

This team wears a light green and white uniform, a more faded green than the leaves of the trees in the forest around Hinode.  Tsutomu remembers watching one of their matches on the first day, with Ushijima, Semi, and Kawanishi.  This team has two coaches, and matching warm-up jackets with their numbers on the back, and a coordinated fan section with girls screaming for the captain every time he so much as bats an eyelash.  Nobody on the team is exceptionally tall or strong, but they work together in a practiced, familiar way, as though they know each other better than they know themselves.

Semi said, when he watched them play, that the team is centered on its captain – a setter, with curly brown hair, cunning eyes, and a sly smile that reminds Tsutomu of a plant he saw in his biology textbook once, one that preys on insects, eats its opponents alive.  Despite the presence of two coaches (two coaches!), he leads the team’s strategy meetings, analyzing his opponents closely to find the precise chink in their armor – to figure out how to make them crack.

Tsutomu would be worried, if not for the fact that he knows there are no chinks in Shiratorizawa’s armor.  They’ve practiced their skills for years now.  Semi serves, Yamagata and Oohira receive, Shirabu sets, Tsutomu and Ushijima spike, Tendou and Kawanishi block.

_We are the individual pieces of a large organism.  If each of us does his job perfectly, we will fight as one unit._

Ushijima stands at the edge of the court, before their game starts.  He closes his eyes and concentrates.  Tsutomu watches him – thinks of him as a mountain, as a volcano, with a storm brewing just beneath the surface.

Tsutomu remembers the first time he saw Ushijima serve.  And then, he strides over to the edge of the court.  Taps Ushijima’s shoulder.

“In this match,” he says, “I will prove that I’m worthy of the title of ace.”

Ushijima stares down at him – and for a moment, Tsutomu is terrified that he’ll narrow his eyes or get angry, that Tsutomu is trying to take his spot.

But Ushijima only looks at him calmly, steady as a mountain, and replies, “Okay.  Good luck.”

 

Shiratorizawa wins.  That goes without saying.

 

They leave the court in single file, after.

The opposing team is collapsed on their side of the court.  Tsutomu thinks some of them are crying.  He feels bad – he thinks he would cry, too, if Shiratorizawa had lost – but he can’t quite imagine the feeling.  His team has played five games.  Won five games.

_Played five games.  Won five games.  Played five games.  Won five games.  Shiratorizawa.  Shiratorizawa.  Shiratorizawa._

The cheers echo in Tsutomu’s head even as they leave the court, like a steady heartbeat or the sound of rain.  He wants to imprint them into his mind so that he can always hear them.  So that they replace the beating of his heart.

They leave the court in single file.  Semi goes first, then Yamagata, Shirabu, Kawanishi, Tendou, Oohira, Tsutomu.  Tsutomu hesitates for a moment, looking over his shoulder – he wishes he had a camera, so that he could take a picture of the stadium as it is right now, opponents bent double and scoreboard pronouncing victory and his mother staring open-mouthed, as though she can’t believe that what her son has spent three years practicing has any use.

“Wait,” someone says.

It’s the captain of the losing team, and he’s talking to Ushijima.

Ushijima turns around and waits, silent and patient as an oak tree.

The other captain raises one index finger and points it directly at Ushijima.  His eyes are bright, shining wet, but his gaze is steady.  “Next time, we’ll win.  Next time.”

“There is no next time for us,” Ushijima answers.  “I am graduating in the spring.  But you are a talented setter.  I hope to play with you someday.”

The other captain begins to sputter a reply, but before he can get it out, Ushijima has turned and walked past Tsutomu.  Tsutomu spares one last look at the court, then follows.

 

The locker room erupts into cheers when Ushijima walks in.

They’d cheered on the court when he scored the final point, of course.  But after a few seconds, Oohira shot everyone a look, reminding them not to act too arrogant, to present a good impression to the last.  But now, they’ve returned to their locker room – _their own_ locker room – the _victor’s_ locker room – all of the nervousness that they’d been holding in for three days bursts forth at once, in _Miracle boy Wakatoshiii_ s and _Shira-tori-zawa_ s and _we did it we won we did it we won WE DID IT WE WON._

Tsutomu screams until his lungs give out.  And then he grins, so wide he thinks his face might split, and jumps on top of one of the benches, rattles the lockers, makes noise – as though any mere noise can capture how invincible he feels.

Ushijima passes among the upperclassmen, giving Oohira a high five and Yamagata a nod and Semi a fist-bump – and then he stops in front of Tendou, and he smiles.

Tsutomu doesn’t think he’s ever seen Ushijima smile like this before.  It’s a bright smile, a huge smile, a closing his eyes and letting all the warmth inside him shine out smile.  You could power all of Tokyo for a month with this smile.  Tsutomu looks at it and looks and grins –

And then, Tendou surges forward, throws his arms around the captain, and presses his lips to Ushijima’s.

For a moment, the room goes silent.  Nobody moves.  Tsutomu wants to ask somebody what’s going on, but none of the others seem to have any more idea what’s going on than he does – except for Oohira, who’s smiling slightly, and Semi, who looks like he’s about to laugh.

Tendou steps back all at once, his eyes wide as small moons.  He opens his mouth, about to stammer something – Tsutomu doesn’t know what – but before he can, Ushijima steps forward and engulfs him in a hug.  Ushijima locks his arms around Tendou, holds on, and all the tension eases out of Tendou as though he’s a paper lantern slowly drifting back down to earth.

Tsutomu wonders what a hug from Ushijima feels like.  It would be warm, he thinks.  And solid.  Like hugging a bear.  Then, he wonders why he’s wondering.

He jumps down from the bench and runs forward – launching himself at Ushijima’s back and wrapping his arms around both of his senpai.  A moment passes – the hug _is_ warm – and then he feels Oohira’s embrace from behind him, and sees Yamagata approach from the front, and hears Shirabu yell at Semi and Kawanishi to _come on pretend you like us for once_ –

And then the whole team is standing there in that victor’s locker room, holding onto each other like they never want to let go.

“We did it,” Tendou says quietly.  “We really did it.”

“Yes,” Ushijima replies.  “Yes.”

 

 

_November 29, 1948_

The train pulls into Hinode at one-fifteen P.M.

Reon marvels at the time – only half a day has gone by, the tournament has been two and a half days in total, but he feels as though it took several lifetimes.  As though each game was a lifetime, and the exhaustion is only now setting in.  Every one of his limbs is sore.  He wants to go home and sleep for two weeks, minimum.

“Shit,” Yamagata says.

The trail jolts to a stop and everyone stands up – for Reon, extending his legs takes near-Herculean effort.

“What?” Oohira asks him.

Yamagata sighs.  “I missed my stop.”

They all pile off the train.  Yamagata stops on the platform, looking back and forth from the now-closing doors to the staircase leading down.  Reon glances up at the timetable on a nearby post – the next train isn’t coming for another half hour.

“We _could_ go back to school,” Goshiki suggests.

“What?  Are you serious?” Shirabu demands.  “We got the day off, we have to enjoy it!”

“I could go to school,” Yamagata says.

“We could brag to everyone about how we won,” Semi points out.

That settles it: they all clatter down the stairs from the train platform and meander over to the school.  At least, they _try_ to meander – Goshiki decides to sprint, and then Shirabu’s running after him, and then Semi’s proving that he’s faster, and then somehow the whole team is having a running contest.  They exhaust Reon, sometimes.

And then, they round the corner just before the school, and Reon stops in his tracks.

There is a huge banner hanging from the second floor window.  It’s white, with bold purple lettering – close in color to their uniforms.  It reads:

_CONGRATULATIONS SHIRATORIZAWA VOLLEYBALL TEAM!!!_

As the team stops beneath the banner and stares up, a few heads poke out of the second floor windows, followed by a few more, followed by even more, until it seems like half the school is hanging out the open windows.  Half the school is cheering for them.

“Shira-tori-zawa!  Shira-tori-zawa!  Shira-tori-zawa!”

“We listened to your game during lunch, on the radio!” a girl in the third-year class shouts.  “You guys were incredible!”

“Incredible!” ten – or twenty – or fifty – voices echo in agreement.  Ten or twenty or fifty people who know what Reon’s team accomplished, who applaud them for it, who think they’re incredible.

Not a single newspaper reported on the accident that killed Reon’s parents.

But he thinks a newspaper might report on a team of boys who went to a national volleyball competition and won it, despite having no official experience and no coach.  He thinks a newspaper might report on a team of boys who convinced the leader of a large up-and-coming construction firm to build them a gym for free.  He thinks a newspaper might report on a team of boys who, through mastering a new sport, brought honor to their town and friendship to each other.

And if no newspaper does, he’ll go find all the editors within ten kilometers of Hinode and punch them in the face.

 

 

_November 30, 1948_

“You’re building us a gym.”

Kenjirou marches into Takamatsu’s office with a trophy in his hand and a scowl on his face.  The trophy isn’t much – just a tiny volleyball in gold plastic, perched on a thin gold plastic wire.  But it has a plaque at the bottom with _ALL-JAPAN HIGH SCHOOL VOLLEYBALL COMPETITION CHAMPIONS_ printed at the bottom, and that’s the important part.

Takamatsu turns and stares at Kenjirou, eyes wide and mouth agape, the way he might stare at a wild animal that had barged in.  Kenjirou notes that Takamatsu isn’t alone – there are two men in crisp black suits sitting on the other side of his fancy wood desk, a contract between them and Takamatsu.  Perfect.

Kenjirou turns back to the doorway.  The door is still hanging open, and Semi’s standing in its place, looking as though he’s trying very hard not to laugh.

_Shirabu, what the fuck,_ he mouths at Kenjirou.  Kenjirou shoots him a glare.  Oohira appears behind him, eyebrows drawn together in that special Oohira way that all of them say is going to give him wrinkles.

“Takamatsu, who is this?” one of the men in suits demands.

Takamatsu opens his mouth – probably to deny that he has any idea who Kenjirou is.  Fat chance.

“My name is Shirabu Kenjirou,” Kenjirou says.  “I’m a member of the Shiratorizawa Volleyball Team, from Hinode.  Sakura Construction is developing the space we used to practice, and this man promised that if we won a national tournament, his firm would build us a gym.  Well.”  Kenjirou strides up to the desk, head held high, and places the trophy in the center of the desk, on top of the contract.  “We won the tournament.”

He raises one eyebrow at Takamatsu.   _Your move._

Takamatsu picks up the trophy.  Examines it closely.  Runs his finger across the embossed letters of the plaque.

“You did win the tournament,” he admits.  “I’ll see what I can do about your gym.”

Kenjirou shakes his head.  “No.  You won’t _see what you can do_.  You’ll do it.  You’ll go talk to your bosses right now.  You promised us that you’d make this happen.”  He throws out his arm to indicate the doorway, where all of his teammates are now gathered, watching the conversation intently.

Takamatsu looks at each of them in turn, then looks back to Kenjirou.  Kenjirou faces him, unblinking.  After going up against Kageyama Tobio, genius setter from Miyagi, this guy is no problem.

“We will build you a gym,” he says.

Kenjirou nods.  “Thank you.”

He bows at the waist, then turns on his heel and strides out.  His teammates follow his lead.

 

 

_December, 1948_

Sakura Construction builds them a gym.

A site is chosen in the area around Hinode, a patch of land in the foothills of the mountains that was cleared years ago by the timber industry.  The spot is, purely by chance, along the team’s running route.  Hayato thinks that if he could craft stories the way Kawanishi and Tendou do, he would find some kind of metaphor in that.

Semi and Shirabu become the team’s point people in negotiations with the company.  The two of them meet with Takamatsu once or twice a week after school, bringing him diagrams, explanations, and other information that the rest of the team puts together at lunch.  Where they used to invent drills and go over practice games, they now spend their time on specifications, materials, designs.  Ushijima sees simple solutions, and Tendou asks the right questions, and Goshiki has a hundred incredible ideas, and Kawanishi can form the most logical explanations, and Oohira keeps them all on task, and Hayato … Hayato mostly just listens.

The whole ordeal leaves Hayato feeling a bit lost.  He’s never done well at school, never really understood mathematics or physics beyond memorizing enough to pass his tests.  He’s not planning on going to college like the rest of the third-years.  (He has a job lined up at a cousin’s convenience store, but that’s all.  It’s nothing special.)  He starts to think that maybe he could stop going to lunch with them, or stop hanging out after school with them, or stop taking the train to Hinode all together, and nobody would miss him.

And then, one day, Hayato twists his ankle.

He isn’t paying attention to his surroundings, just trying to keep up with the other third-years as they run their usual route into the mountains – he doesn’t notice the huge tree root stretching across the path until he’s already tripped over it.  The injury isn’t painful so much as it’s annoying, a dull ache in his ankle that stings every time he takes a step, as though he’s being scolded for trying too hard.

“You should go back,” Oohira says.

Hayato glares at him.   _Obviously_ , he should go back.   _Obviously,_ he can’t finish the run with everyone else this morning.   _Obviously,_ this is going to be just another thing that sets him apart from the rest of his classmates, with their perfect health and their scholarships and their futures.

Oohira, Tendou, Kawanishi, and even Goshiki all over to go back with him, but Hayato doesn’t see any reason why someone else should miss the run.  As he begins the long hobble back, he hears the team start heading off again, their steps echoing in rhythm through the forest.

He can’t help wondering if they’re faster without him.

After a kilometer or so of walking and more breaks than Hayato would like to admit taking, he reaches the site of the new gym.  It’s taking shape quickly, steel beams and wood paneling rising out of the earth like a vision pulled forth by the strength of Shiratorizawa’s will.  Hayato sits down on the side of the road, stretches his injured leg out in front of him, and looks at the building.

He can see what will be the main gym – a huge room with high ceilings and wood floors that will echo with the shouts of kids playing volleyball.  He can see smaller rooms that he guesses will be closets and locker rooms – the closet is much smaller than the main gym, but still so spacious.  Hayato imagines a hundred volleyballs could fit in there.  A hundred volleyballs – more than he’s ever seen in his life.  There’s even a room near the back that the construction workers have been running pipes to – a bathroom.

Hayato wonders if Oohira’s grandfather will miss having a team of sweaty boys invade his house every day to use the bathroom.  He might, Hayato thinks.  At least, he’s going to miss Oohira.  The guy is going to school to become a teacher, and Hayato knows, even though he hasn’t told anyone, that he wants to someday become Shiratorizawa’s coach.  He’ll be a great coach, Hayato’s certain.

“Hey, aren’t you one of the guys on the volleyball team?”

Hayato looks away from the new gym to stare at the man standing in front of him.  He’s around Hayato’s mother’s age, short and stocky, with closely-cropped hair and skin almost as dark as Oohira’s.  He’s wearing a construction suit, but he’s holding his bright yellow helmet in his hand.  There are lines around his eyes – but not worry lines, Hayato thinks.  Laughter lines.

“Yeah,” Hayato says.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize work had started already – I can go.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” the man replies, chuckling good-naturedly.  “I’m just setting up.  And besides, you boys are always welcome here.  I’m Mitsuya,” he adds, sticking his hand out to Hayato.

Hayato takes it, and Mitsuya pulls him to his feet.  Hayato realizes with a start that he’s taller than the other man – it’s a novel feeling, as he’s one of the shortest on the team.

“Yamagata,” Hayato introduces himself.  “I play libero.  It’s a defensive position.”

There’s a pause.  Mitsuya seems to be waiting for Hayato to say something, but he has no idea what.  An explanation of the game, maybe?  But he knew Hayato is on the team, so why … Wait.

“How did you know I’m on the team?” he asks.

Mitsuya smiles, as though he’s proud of Hayato for figuring out the answer to a difficult question.  “I actually saw one of your games,” he explains.  “My son was playing on his school’s team in that tournament you boys went to.  Your team never played his, but you were on the court right after his team, on the second day, and I lost track of time watching you.  Shiratorizawa, the team without a coach or proper training – you guys were very impressive.  Are very impressive.”

Hayato nods.  Sure, his teammates are impressive.  He certainly can’t argue with that.

“You must’ve been watching Ushijima – our captain and ace spiker,” he says.  “His spikes are so powerful, almost nobody can receive them.  Or Tendou – that guy is crazy-good at blocking.  He can somehow guess his way through opposite team’s strategies.  I think he made enemies of every spiker we faced.  Or Goshiki – the one first-year on the team.  He’s completely unpredictable, but he has tons of energy and puts all of it towards trying to win.  Or –”

“Actually,” Mitsuya interrupts, “I was most impressed by you.”

Hayato looks at Mitsuya.  Shakes his head.  Narrows his eyes.  “You’re kidding, right?”

Mitsuya chuckles – the laughter lines on his forehead furrow and smooth out, like roads after an earthquake.

“I’m not kidding,” he says.  “I saw how you played.  How you didn’t let the ball drop.  There were so many times when I thought the other team’s spiker had hit the ball so hard, nobody would be able to receive it – but you’d get to the right position, bend your knees, and hit it up.  Every time.  You never got to score any point, but was clear that you’ve worked hard to support your teammates.  And, to me, that’s more impressive than spiking or blocking.”

Hayato stares at the man.  He’s waiting for the other shoe to drop – for Mitsuya to say he’s pulling a prank, he’s only impressed by how easy it was to fool Hayato.  He’s waiting.  Any moment now.

But the moment never comes.  Mitsuya just smiles at Hayato kindly, then says, “I’d better get back to work, and I imagine you have to get to school.  But it was nice meeting you, Yamagata.  Stop by any time.”

He waves and turns around, heading back to the construction site.  Hayato watches him go for a long moment, the worker’s words echoing in his mind like a proclamation shouted from a mountaintop.

_You’ve worked hard to support your teammates.  And, to me, that’s more impressive than spiking or blocking._

When Hayato finally walks back to school, he meets up with his teammates - and Oohira asks him how his ankle is feeling, and Ushijima tells him about a cool dog they saw on the way down, and Semi quizzes him on vocabulary they’re going to be tested on in English class, and Tendou calls him _Miracle boy Hayato_ for refusing to go to the nurse, and Shirabu glares until he agrees to go to the nurse anyway, and Goshiki gives him an enthusiastic high five for no apparent reason at all.

And Hayato’s twisted ankle barely aches.  

 

 

_January 4, 1948_

“Oka-san.”

Tsutomu’s mother does not look up from her magazine.  She’s taken to reading magazines often, lately – all the most fashionable magazines, with tips on beauty and fashion and Westernization on a budget.  Tsutomu isn’t sure why she reads them – she never takes any of the advice in the magazines, never buys any of the perfumes they advertise or practices their tips for stretching one loaf of bread last a full week.  Tsutomu thinks if he asked her about it, she might explain why she finds them so interesting.  But he isn’t going to ask her.  He saves his questions for more important things.

“Yes, Tsutomu-kun?” she asks.  She turns one page with a long, bright blue fingernail – flipping from _Six Ways to Transform Your Kimono_ to an ad for the newest Japanese-English dictionary.

“What happened to Oto-san?”

The magazine drops onto the floor.  It’s light, lighter than a textbook, but still lands with a quiet _thud._ His mother raises her eyes.

“Tsutomu-kun, I … Why would you ask that?” she says, looking at him with a bright wetness in her eyes.  Looking at him as though he’s broken her heart.

“Because it’s been three years, Ka-san,” Tsutomu presses.  He tries to take deep breaths, but his heart is beating too fast - pounding harsh and uncontrollable, like rain during a thunderstorm.  “I haven’t seen him in three years.  I haven’t known where he is, or what he’s doing, or if he’s ever coming back …”

Tsutomu’s mother’s voice trembles, warbles, like the song of a bird in flight.  “Your father is … is … in prison.  For war crimes.  He was tried, and he was convicted, and now … now he’s there for life.”

_In prison.  For life._

Tsutomu feels strangely light, at the words.  As though he’s been walking in concrete shoes for three years, and now that he’s let them go, he can float two centimeters above the ground.

“Oh,” he says, stupidly.  “That’s not so bad.  I thought he was dead.”

In a sudden, jerking motion, his mother reaches across the table – knocks plates and bowls and chopsticks aside – reaches out and pulls him to her chest.

Her face is wet, when she presses it to his neck.  There’s soy sauce in his lap, he’ll have to change before he goes to school.  But her arms are strong, holding him in place.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.  Her voice cracks on the words - quiet and rough, unsure as the sun peeking out after a storm.  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.  I’m sorry this happened.  I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he tells her.  “It’s okay.”

And he reaches his arms out, stretches them around her waist.  Holding her back.  Holding on.

 

 

_January 25, 1949_

“Hey.  Kawanishi.”

Taichi looks up from packing up his bookbag.  It’s funny – he used to spend the time between class and practice thinking of all the things he could be doing if he wasn’t about to go physically exert himself for a few hours with idiots who somehow thought volleyball could solve their problems, but now that practice is temporarily cancelled, he can’t remember a single one.

A couple of guys from his class are standing in front of his desk, fiddling with their hands as though they’re nervous about something.  He tries to remember their names, but he can’t be certain.  He thinks one of them starts with a T.

“You’re on that volleyball team, right?” the one whose name starts with a T asks.  He’s tall, skinny, with a mop of dark hair that constantly falls over his eyes.

Taichi nods.

“We were wondering, um …” the other boy – shorter, but not by much, with olive skin and glasses.  He’s part European, Taichi remembers.  His father is Greek, or something.  “Um.  Since most of your team is third-years …”

“Most of our team is third-years,” Taichi repeats, hoping that will help them get to the point.

“We were wondering if you were looking to fill their spots, when they graduate,” name-that-starts-with-a-T explains.  “We heard about how you won that tournament – that was really cool, by the way – and thought maybe … it might be fun.”

“But we were also wondering if … if you could tell us about it first?” the other boy says.

Taichi thinks about it.  How to explain volleyball to two boys who might want to join his team.  His mind calls up phrases from the petition, with high-minded diction and expert comma placement, but he dismisses them.  For this, he needs different words.  Truer words.

“Volleyball is challenging as fuck,” Taichi tells his classmates.  “You have to practice for days just to be able to receive the ball – and that’s the most basic move.  Everything takes patience, being able to learn the stuff you’re not good at from your teammates, and being able to teach them what _they’re_ not good at.  But once it starts to click – once you find your position, your skill, once you figure out how to work with your team – then it becomes something else.  Something incredible.  

“Volleyball is a sport you can play anywhere, as long as you have a net and a ball.  It’s a game that can go on for hours, if you have worthy opponents.  It’s challenging and it’s unexpected and it’s exhilarating.  When you play it, you feel like you’re flying.  Joining that team was the most important thing I’ve ever done.  And, now that you mention it – yeah, we _are_ looking for new recruits.”

Taichi looks at his two classmates.  They’re both staring at him, wide-eyed and slack-jawed.  He thinks he recognizes that expression – recognizes it from when Goshiki first showed them his slides.

“Practice starts three weeks from Monday,” Taichi says.  And with that, he grabs his bag and heads out.

The next day during math class, he begins to doodle flowers in the margin of his notebook.  Carnations and violets and morning glories.

 

 

_February 9, 1949_

They’re opening the factory today.

It’s going to make radios, this factory.  A new plant for one of the big up-and-coming technology companies based in Tokyo.  There are a lot of big up-and-coming technology companies based in Tokyo, these days.  Eita watches their progress with interest in the business section of the newspaper, takes note of how their infrastructures are organized and which of them are making concessions to the trade unions, wonders what his father would say about this new Westernized economy.

In December of 1945, a bill was passed establishing a national Labor Relations Commission.  When he read about it, Eita ripped out the page and brought it to school to show Shirabu.

And now, he’s sitting next to Shirabu, on the hill overlooking a new factory, glinting white and silver in the pre-dawn light.  It’s large, squat, rectangular, with clean reinforced concrete walls and a steel roof, windows taking up half of some walls, filled in with thick panes of transparent glass.  It’s impressive, Eita thinks, how quickly they put this factory together – it’s only been a couple of years since the old building was torn down, and now this one is ready for action.

“How does it feel?” he asks Shirabu.

The other setter shrugs.  A few rays of early light reflect off of his hair, making it shine like gold.  “Weird,” he replies.

“Weird bad or weird good?”

Shirabu considers the question, for so long Eita is about to repeat it when he says, “Both.”

They sit in silence for a minute longer.  The sun pokes its head over the horizon, spreading orange and red and pink over the countryside.

“You’re gonna do this when you get older, right?” Shirabu says suddenly.  “Running factories.  Managing companies.”

Eita is going to business school in the fall.  He’s going to train for four years, but he has other plans, plans that only Shirabu knows about – plans to apply for a day laborer position at his father’s old company.  They don’t build ships for the navy, any more.  Japan’s navy no longer exists.  Instead, they build ships for trade.  But if Eita were in charge, they’d expand to cars, trains, machinery.  If Eita were in charge, the company would be making ten times the profit it is now.

“Yeah,” he answers.  “As long as I have someone to kick my ass when I’m not treating my workers right.”

Shirabu grins.  “Sounds like my kind of job.”

As though in time with their conversation, a whistle sounds from inside the factory.  A small army of workers marches up the front walk, talking and laughing over their morning coffee, shoving each other like volleyball players on their way to practice.  The engines begin to run, the steel begins to pour, and smoke rises out of the chimneys, gray mixing with the bright colors of dawn.

In a slow, smooth motion, Eita leans sideways, resting his head on Shirabu’s shoulder.  They fit together easily – like two pieces of an engine coming together.

They sit there together until the sun rises, bright and shining in the morning sky.

 

 

_February 18, 1949_

When Hayato emerges from the bathroom, he finds Oohira sitting on the edge of his bed, hunched over, his head in his hands.

Official practice is over – delayed for the kouhai while the new gym is built, but ended for the upperclassmen who have entrance exams to focus on – but Hayato still goes to Oohira’s house almost every day after school, so that they can study together.  Oohira has a bigger room, and a porch with a swing, and a kind grandfather who pours them tea and tells them funny stories about when he was a kid during the Meiji Restoration.

But today, Hayato went into the bathroom to take a break from studying vocabulary and emerged to find his friend still as a statue.  He walks over, bare feet padding quietly over the wood floor, and places a hand on Oohira’s right shoulder.

“Reon?”

“They’re tearing down the school,” he says.  “To build a new one in its place.  Ojii-san just told me.”

Hayato doesn’t have to ask which school.

He thinks, for a moment – considers all possible options, the way he does when he’s in a game and needs to be prepared to receive a spike from anywhere on the court.  His list of options is long, but only one makes sense.

“We have to go destroy it first.”

Oohira stares up at him as though he just suggested they assassinate Ushijima and become the new captains.

“What?  It makes sense,” Hayato says defensively.  “If someone else tears it down, it’ll be like they’re taking away the one relic you had of your parents or whatever.  But if you do it – say, if we go over there right now and light the place on fire – then it’ll be like you letting go of your old emotions.  Way better.”

Oohira stares at him for a few more seconds – long enough for Hayato to worry that he’s said something wrong, that he’s about to get kicked out again.  But then, he stands up, opens the top drawer of his desk, and takes out a box of matches.

“Go over there and light the place on fire?” he repeats.

Hayato grins.  “I’ve always wanted to play with matches.”

And so they go and they light the place on fire.  Well, it’s not quite that easy – they have to buy a jug of kerosene, and then they have to take the kerosene a few stops on the train while deflecting strange looks from all of its (relatively few, but still judgmental) late-afternoon passengers, and then they have to lug the kerosene to the center of the old building and pour it on every wooden object they can find, and then they have to gather some kindling from the brush around the school, and then they have to ignite the whole thing with a couple of matches, and then they have to _sprint out of the building as fast as they can._

“Pretty nice place you have here,” Hayato says as he and Oohira watch the blaze.  They’re sitting a few hundred meters away, backs against a tree that, according to Oohira, used to be where the youngest kids gathered after school for their parents to pick them up.  “I like the courtyard setup.”

“It _was_ nice,” Oohira agrees.  “Impractical, though.  In the winter, you’d have to go all the way around the school to get from one room to another.  I liked to look out at it, when I got bored in class.  I had a desk next to the window, right there.”

He points at a spot somewhere near the center of the building.  Hayato nods, pretending he can differentiate rooms in a structure now crumbling to ashes.  The building was a wreck when they got here - a skeleton schoolhouse, lacking a roof and doors and children.  But Oohira could still identify one classroom as 1B, another as 5A, could pick out bathrooms and broom closets and teacher’s lounges.

“Are you okay?” Hayato asks.

Oohira glances at him, and Hayato pretends he can’t see the dampness in his eyes.

“I will be,” Oohira says.  And he leans over, resting his head on Hayato’s shoulder and closing his eyes against the heat.  For a moment, they sit there quiet, the only sound the crackling of the fire nearby.

Oohira says something, muffled by the fire.

“What was that?” Hayato wants to know.

“I said, I like your jacket.”

“Oh.”  Hayato stares at the fire – for a second, he thinks he can make out an angry face among the flames, an open mouth ready to yell.  “It was my father’s.”

“Wait – what?  Since when?”  Oohira sits up and stares at Hayato, concern written over his features as though Hayato is the one whose old school is burning.

Hayato shrugs.  “Since the army mailed it back to us and I cut out the part with his name on it.  Didn’t see any reason to waste a good jacket.”

Oohira examines Hayato’s face for another moment, his gaze searching, then leans back against the tree.

“I suppose so,” he says.  “It _is_ nice.  I’ve been meaning to get something like this for myself before leaving for school, but everything in the stores is too expensive.”

“You can have mine,” Hayato tells him.

“Are you sure?” Oohira asks.

Hayato runs his fingers over his father’s army jacket.  It’s worn, green leather faded and cracking like the asphalt of his first volleyball court.  The seams are wearing thin, and the arms are stained with coffee and blood, and there is no embroidery over the front pocket, but he’ll never be able to forget that, once, there was.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” Hayato says.  “I don’t need it anymore.”

He takes off the jacket and hands it to his best friend, and then the two of them get up and run to the closest fire department.

 

 

_March 13, 1949_

“I’ve been recruited,” Ushijima says.

He and Satori are sitting with their backs to the old apartment building, looking out at the beginnings of Sakura Construction’s new complex.  The old building is supposed to be torn down tomorrow.  Satori heard about it from Semi, and decided to go back there one more time, just to – he didn’t know, touch it, or something.  He found that he wasn’t the only one with that idea.

“Recruited?” Satori asks.

He looks at Ushijima.  Ushijima keeps staring out.  The new complex is starting to take shape, foundations and a few stories rising up out of the space where their volleyball court once stood.  The building is an empty shell, empty rooms with nothing inside.  But Sakura Construction is fast – within a few months, those empty rooms will become full apartments, with wallpaper and electricity and indoor plumbing.  Full families will move into those full apartments, renting rooms at reasonable prices.  And maybe, within a year, children will play on the blacktop outside the building, where their volleyball team used to play.

“Waseda University is a premier university located in Shinjuku, Tokyo,” Ushijima says.  He sounds as though he’s reciting words he read in an advertisement.  “It has excellent programs in economics and political science, and an up-and-coming athletic program.  Their volleyball team won the college national tournament last year.”

“I didn’t even know there was a college national tournament,” Satori admits.  Which sounds stupid, now that he says it out loud – of course there’s a college national tournament.  There’s a _high school_ national tournament.

“One of the coaches at Waseda saw our final game, against Aoba Johsai,” Ushijima goes on.  “He wanted to talk to me, after the game – that’s why I was late getting to the train when we went back.  He said that he liked my strength, my power – that he would love to see me at Waseda.  They’ve offered me a full scholarship.”

_Full scholarship._  Satori thought that was a myth – a university actually being so impressed by a potential student that it offers to let them study there for free.  He’d thought that was a myth.  But then, he would’ve thought Ushijima Wakatoshi was a myth, before he met him.

“Congratulations,” Satori says.  The word sounds empty, even to his ears – empty as the half-finished apartment building in front of him.

Ushijima nods.  “Thank you.”

“So, you’ll be in Tokyo, and I’ll be in Okinawa, studying English, linguistics, and translation.”

Satori doesn’t need to tell Ushijima he’s studying English, linguistics, and translation.  The whole team knows he’s studying English, linguistics, and translation.  Actually, the whole town probably knows he’s studying English, linguistics, and translation, at this point – he got into his dream program at his dream university, and he’s going to help American and Japanese people understand each other better for a living, and he’s so excited to start, he can barely stand it.  

Except that - the closer his program gets, the scarier it becomes.  All of his English is self-taught.  His vocabulary is mostly impractical.  His pronunciation is terrible.  And starting the program will mean moving to a new city and leaving his friends – he isn’t sure how he’ll survive school, when he doesn’t have practice to look forward to every day.

Satori wants to tell Ushijima all of this.  A few months ago, he might have.  But something is stuck in his throat.  Silence hangs heavy between them – not comfortable like it always was when they were younger, but dense and tangible, like a dark shadow.

“Satori.”

Satori turns, at the sound of his first name – and Ushijima is looking at him.

“What you did,” Ushijima says, “the last day of the tournament –”

“I’m sorry about that, I’m so sorry,” Satori interrupts, before he can say any more.  “I don’t know what I was thinking – I wasn’t thinking, I just acted – I hope we can forget about it – I hope we can still be friends –”

“Satori,” Ushijima says again.  “I don’t want to forget about it if you don’t want to.”

_“Oh.”_  This changes things.  This _changes_ things.  Satori’s mind races with a thousand possibilities, a thousand scenarios, writing letters and visiting Tokyo and –

“But,” Ushijima adds, dark eyes still holding Satori’s gaze, “I don’t know that I … That I want what you want.  I’m not interested in romance.  I like us how we are.  But I care about you.  I trust you.  I would be interested in … experimenting.”

Satori feels his face split open in a grin, so wide it pulls at the edges of his cheeks.  He wonders suddenly why he didn’t make a move two years ago.

“Is that okay?” Ushijima asks.

“So okay,” Satori replies, nodding so hard he’s worried his head might fall off.  “Very okay.”

“Okay,” Ushijima says.  And then he moves forward, turns toward Satori, and leans in – bending down so that he can press his lips to Satori’s.  The kiss is soft, delicate, careful – like the first flowers of a magnolia tree growing up towards the sun.  Satori closes his eyes and presses back.  Ushijima tastes like salt and fish – and Satori thinks, in a moment of euphoria, that maybe he’ll have to be more thorough when he brushes his teeth before school, now.

“Was that good?” Ushijima wonders as he pulls away.  His voice is deeper, rougher than before.

“Very good,” Satori tells him.  “It was like a promise.”

Ushijima smiles – and Satori thinks he would live through the end of the world, to see that smile.  

“A promise,” he repeats.  And then he leans in again.

 

 

_April 2, 1949_

On the morning before his move to Waseda, Wakatoshi goes for a run.

He runs slowly, legs pumping amiably as he ascends the mountain path.  Civilization falls away behind him like a memory of a wound long healed, paved road giving way to dirt and construction zones giving way to trees.  Wakatoshi counts every tree he passes, the oaks and maples and pines greeting him like old friends, bowing slightly in the breeze.  The sky is clear and blue above him, the birds call to each other in harmony.  It is early, but not as early as he used to start his runs.  The sun is already free of the horizon, the forest already come alive.

It is not as early as Wakatoshi used to start his runs, because this morning, he is not running alone.

He stops to rest at an evergreen tree.  He reaches both hands out to its rough bark, stretches his legs back, presses his feet into the dirt.  Stays like that for a moment, so quiet and still he could almost be part of the tree.

A yell races past him.

Well.  To be more specific.  Not a yell.  A yelling first-year, soon to be second-year, soon to be ace.  Goshiki, sprinting as fast as his legs will carry him, somehow yelling at the top of his lungs at the same time.  Sometimes, Oohira worries that Goshiki will run out of air.  But Wakatoshi knows his lungs are bottomless, untapped, like a mountain spring or an ocean or a typhoon.

“He’s going to get lost,” Tendou says.

Wakatoshi stands up, turns around.  Tendou is standing in the middle of the path, hands on his hips, grinning like the sunrise come to life.  He looks like he’s breathing heavily, but keeps cutting his breaths off and pushing his shoulders back even though he’s clearly tired.  Wakatoshi decides not to question it.

“He will be fine,” Wakatoshi answers.  “He has run on this path before.”

“Yeah, following _you._ ”  Tendou takes a couple of steps forward, reaches out his right hand, places it squarely on Wakatoshi’s shoulder.  He bends his left leg back at the knee and pulls it to his back, stretching.  “That kid could get lost in a paper bag.”

“He will be fine,” Wakatoshi repeats.

Tendou shrugs and switches legs.

That’s how the rest of the team finds them, a few minutes later: Tendou stretching, Wakatoshi standing steady as the trees lining the path.  Semi and Shirabu are the first to reach them, bickering about something or other as they jog.  Next is Kawanishi, striding easily up the path with his long legs.  Then are Oohira and Yamagata, both dripping with sweat even though it’s a comfortable fifteen degrees Celsius, by Wakatoshi’s estimate.

“I thought today was supposed to be a _rest_ day,” Yamagata says, bending at the waist and placing his hands on his knees.

‘This is only a light run,” Wakatoshi replies.

‘Light, my _ass,”_ Semi says.

Shirabu raises an eyebrow.  “Light your ass on fire?  With pleasure.”

“Shirabu, what the fuck.”

“Guys.”  Oohira takes a few steps up the path and gives them all his Look – perfected after years of practice.  “Where’s Goshiki?”

“He ran ahead,” Wakatoshi answers.

Shirabu groans.  “Great.  Now we’re gonna have to run faster to catch up to him and make sure he hasn’t, like, impaled himself on a tree or anything.”

“He will be fine,” Wakatoshi says, for what feels like the hundredth time that morning.

Oohira sighs, looks up the path one more time, then says, “Okay.  Ushijima, you run up and get Goshiki.  The rest of us can walk after you.”

“ _Walk?”_  Shirabu sounds as though someone just suggested he switch to playing tennis.

“Or run, if you want,” Oohira corrects himself.  “But some of us are tired, and want this rest day to actually be a rest day.”

“Well, I’m running,” Shirabu declares.  He bends his knees and takes off, racing almost as fast as Goshiki had.

“If he’s running, I’m running.”  Semi follows.

Yamagata shakes his head as though he can’t believe these idiots, but takes off a moment later.  Oohira sighs, touches his toes, then jogs on after him.  Kawanishi starts walking.

Tendou flashes Wakatoshi a grin, then begins to jog – easily catching up to Kawanishi, running circles around him, and poking the other blocker with a tree branch he grabbed from the side of the road, trying to egg him into exerting effort.  Wakatoshi estimates he’ll be running within two minutes.

For a moment, Wakatoshi watches all of them go.

Four years ago, he didn’t know any of these people.  He ran on his own, did homework on his own, survived on his own.  Life was quiet.  But now, life is loud and messy and full – of people who make him want to work harder and run faster and _live._  Now that he’s found them, he isn’t sure how he’ll be able to go on without them.

Wakatoshi puts that thought out of his mind and runs – legs pumping, heart pounding – past his friends and up the mountain.

 

When Wakatoshi reaches the top – or, as close as they’ll be able to get to the top without rock climbing – Goshiki is already there, waiting.

“I won!” Goshiki exclaims upon catching sight of his senpai.  He throws his arms up in the shape of a V, smiling brightly.

“So you did,” Wakatoshi tells him.  “Have you found a good place to set up the blanket?”

Goshiki nods and points to a grassy spot between the trees, looking out over the top of the mountain.  there’s a dark purple blanket lying in the grass, weighed down by Goshiki’s backpack in one corner, his water bottle in a second, and one of Tendou’s old comic books in a third.  Wakatoshi drops his backpack in the fourth, to round it out.

“Great view, right?” Goshiki asks.  He spreads his arms, as though to encompass the entirety of Tokyo – a city of thirteen million, bustling beneath them.  Wakatoshi can see smoke rising from factories, cars driving on the roads, trains zooming towards the center.  It’s all in miniature, from up here – as though a god in charge of designing a modern metropolis wanted to make a model first, to ensure that everything would run according to plan, and decided there was no place better to build it than here.

“Yes,” Wakatoshi agrees.

The rest of the team arrives soon enough, approaching in ones and twos with labored panting and wobbly movements.  Wakatoshi hopes Shirabu will include more distance runs in next year’s training regimen.  Each person is carrying a few of the necessary ingredients: Goshiki already set out the blanket, Oohira has the water, Wakatoshi the rice, Semi the fish, Tendou the seaweed and chips, Shirabu the boiled eggs, Kawanishi the plates and napkins, and Yamagata a small flask of sake he somehow managed to procure by means he’s keeping secret (apparently for their own good.)  They set down all the backpacks, drink some water, then gather next to the blanket, looking at each other.

“I’m not really hungry yet,” Kawanishi says.

“Yeah, me neither,” Semi agrees.

Tendou nods, Oohira shrugs.  Wakatoshi is happy to eat whenever his friends are ready.

“Wait, _I’m_ hungry,” Yamagata points out.

Semi looks at him.  “You’re _always_ hungry.”

“Yeah?  So?”

“How about we do something else, then we eat?” Oohira suggests.

The team agrees that that sounds like a good plan, but then another problem arises over what exactly they’ll do.  Volleyball?  Not enough space.  Tell riddles?  Nobody but Semi knows any.  Looking for cool plants?  Only Wakatoshi and Kawanishi are interested.  Hide and seek?  Goshiki would get lost.  (Goshiki points out that he’d made it up to the top on his own just fine. He is ignored.)

Finally, Wakatoshi grows tired of the debate.  

“We can play catch,” he says, interrupting Tendou’s lengthy explanation of some kind of make-believe game he and his sister used to play as kids.

The rest of the team turns to him as one.  Wakatoshi is attacked by an avalanche of, “You brought the _catch ball?  What?_ Why didn’t you mention it _earlier_?”

Wakatoshi stands up, opens his backpack, and takes out his old purple plastic ball.  “We’re playing catch,” he announces.

 

They play catch.

It’s just like it used to be, except that it’s nothing like it used to be.  They stand in a rough circle, about half a meter between each person, and toss the ball from one person to another.  That’s the same.  But it’s been four years since their traditional game of catch in the schoolyard after school, and everyone has skills now that they couldn’t have dreamed of then.  Shirabu sets the ball to Oohira, who spikes it to Yamagata, who receives it cleanly, sending it back to Wakatoshi.  Tendou darts in and out of the center of the circle attempting blocks, and Semi tries a couple of jump float serves (Kawanishi manages to dive and receive one, and his complaints about dirt on his pants are overshadowed by the proud half-smile on his face.)

Goshiki never joined in their original game of catch – he arrived just too late, or perhaps right on time – but now he picks it up quickly.  He spikes the ball across the circle, tries to steal it when it isn’t his turn, leaps to catch it when it goes out of bounds.  He’s a natural, to the point where Wakatoshi wishes he had played with them, before – he would’ve been good competition.

They play for a long time.  Wakatoshi isn’t sure how long.  His father’s watch, hanging on his wrist as sturdy and reliable as always, can tell him what time it is right now, but that isn’t particularly helpful, because he forgot to look at what time they started.  He was counting how many times someone caught the ball at first, but he lost track somewhere after fifty, when Shirabu made a particularly impressive save that involved running backwards into Semi’s chest.

Wakatoshi keeps counting their volleys, but he keeps losing track after smaller and smaller numbers.  Forty-five – thirty-seven – twenty-two – fifteen – eight – four – two.  At fifteen, Semi complains of water dripping down onto his head.  Shirabu tells him it must just be the tree, and they keep playing.  At eight, Yamagata says he’s feeling kind-of damp, and that he thinks the wind has died down.  At four, Oohira says he swears he can feel raindrops.

And at two, Goshiki slips on a piece of damp moss, receives the ball with too much force, and sends it straight up into the branches of a nearby oak tree.

The team gathers at the foot of the tree, staring up.  It’s a tall tree, sturdy, with branches growing out and up, reaching for the sun.  The ball is almost all the way at the top, caught in a V between two limbs.

Yamagata kicks the tree.  Oohira and Semi try to shake it.  Shirabu yells some discouraging remarks.  But the tree doesn’t yield – the ball stays perched, held captive in a prison of leafy green.

“Well, that’s just great,” Kawanishi says.

And with that, the sky opens up.

 

Wakatoshi has never felt rain quite like this.

He’s stood in spring rain showers before, of course – he’s run with his father back home after a storm breaking out, has dashed between the train and his house with his mother after a grocery run.  He’s even raced the weather himself a few times, on solitary runs when he found himself caught far from home.  But all of those times, his entire focus had been devoted to getting _out_ of the rain – to finding shelter, to drying off, to whether or not his clothes would be ruined afterwards.

Right now, his team has no intention of getting out of the rain.  It’s an hour’s run back, at least, and they’ve all seen rain like this.  They know it will continue for a few minutes, then slow to a drizzle, or maybe a damp fog.  By the time they got home, it would probably be sunny again.  So instead, they grab all the food that hasn’t been soaked already and retreat to the relative safety of the trees with the densest branches, crouching in the carpet of pine needles and moss.

The rain is heavy, pounding like the taiko drums at the summer festival or Wakatoshi’s heartbeat after their championship game.  It’s louder than drums, louder than cars – almost louder than the applause they got for their victory.  It looks like a curtain, if curtains could be comprised of thousands of tiny water droplets racing to the ground.  Wakatoshi wonders if there’s a giant up in the clouds somewhere, dumping bucket after bucket onto the earth and laughing at how funny everything looks when it’s wet, as though the world has been turned into one giant pancake.

They eat lunch in individual pieces, no balanced meal for anybody.  Wakatoshi and Tendou have the boiled eggs, Semi and Shirabu the rice, Kawanishi and Goshiki the fish, Oohira the seaweed.  Yamagata finishes the entire bag of chips by himself.  The flask of sake is passed around from tree to tree, each of them taking turns sipping from it.  It burns Wakatoshi’s throat but leaves him feeling strangely warm, as though a tiny fire has lit inside him.

He and Tendou finish all the eggs as though they’re pork buns, devouring each in two or three bites. Wakatoshi hadn’t realized quite how hungry he was until he started eating.

“Hey!” Tendou shouts, once they’re left with an empty container.  “Don’t you wonder what it feels like?”

“What _what_ feels like?” Wakatoshi asks.

Tendou points out – to the trees or the sky or the view of the city now cloaked in rain, Wakatoshi isn’t sure.

“What?”

“The rain!”

Wakatoshi blinks.  He’s known Tendou for a long time, considers him his best friend, but sometimes, the other boy’s actions still make as little sense as they did four years ago.  “Didn’t you feel it when we grabbed the food?”

Tendou shakes his head.  “No, I mean, _really_ feel it.  Like – like –”

And then he’s jumping to his feet and darting out into the downpour.  He stretches his arms out, tilts his head back, and closes his eyes, opening his mouth to catch raindrops on his tongue.  Wakatoshi follows the line of his throat as he swallows the rain water, expanding and then contracting in a smooth motion.

_“Miracle boy Satoriiiii!”_ Tendou hollers.  His voice soars through the rain and carries clean across the trees.

Wakatoshi watches as he begins to twirl in place, grinning as though he was just named king of the world.  (And why not?  He would deserve it.)  His red hair is slicked back against his head, his face washed clean, but he seems untouched – or, not untouched – he seems to shine brighter.  As though the rain has illuminated something within him.

He’s heart-stoppingly beautiful, and Wakatoshi realizes suddenly just how much he will miss him.  The realization is sharper than the rain.

As though he can sense Wakatoshi’s sudden melancholy, Tendou opens his eyes, spins, and dashes back to the tree he was sitting under.  He crouches before Wakatoshi, holding out both hands.

“C’mon,” he says.  “C’mon, c’mon, it feels incredible.”

His face is open, wanting.  His smile is exhilaration.  It’s impossible to say no.

Wakatoshi offers up his hands and allows himself to be pulled to his feet and into the storm.  Tendou twirls him around like a dancer, easily as though he weighs as much as a leaf in the wind – Wakatoshi wonders when he got to be so strong.

He closes his eyes and tilts his head back, the same way Tendou had.  And Tendou’s right – of course Tendou’s right – it feels incredible.  It feels as though the entire world is taking a cold shower and he’s caught in the flood, all of his fears about college and professional volleyball and leaving his friends washed away with the rain.

When Wakatoshi opens his eyes, he realizes that he and Tendou are no longer alone.  The whole team has stepped out into the rain, and the whole team is dancing.  Goshiki is whooping and leaping, Yamagata is splashing in all the puddles he can find.  Semi and Shirabu have ahold of each other’s hands and are trying to pull each other into the mud, but they’re laughing.  Kawanishi is twirling slowly, head tilted up.  And Oohira is standing still in the very center, his arms outstretched and eyes closed, a peaceful smile on his face.

The whole team is dancing.  They have no music save the pounding of the rain, no floor save the carpet of pine needles and moss, no companions but each other.  They have no reason to dance save that they _can_ – that the world feels fresh and new in this moment, as though a new universe is being born.

Wakatoshi doesn’t count the minutes or the seconds.  He lets this moment last forever.

 

The rain lets up, eventually.  It leaves a mist hanging over the mountain, shrouding the tops of the trees and painting the sky soft dove-gray.

Wakatoshi looks at his father’s watch.  It hangs on his wrist like a forgotten promise, second hand no longer ticking.  The rain must have gotten into the gears, he thinks.  But that’s okay.  He can find someone to fix it near his new campus.

“Should we head back soon?” he asks.

Oohira looks at Yamagata, Yamagata looks at Semi, Semi looks at Shirabu.  There’s something they aren’t telling him.

“Not yet,” Shirabu says.  “There’s something we want to give you.”

And Wakatoshi stands perfectly still in the center of the clearing as Shirabu opens his backpack and takes out a flat package wrapped in what appears to be a blue bath towel.

“Some of us had the foresight to actually listen to the radio for today’s weather forecast,” Semi explains.

Shirabu hands Wakatoshi the package.  He holds it carefully – it’s light, and likely fragile, but that doesn’t help him in the slightest at determining what it might be.  Yes, he had the idea for this picnic, and yes, he is the one leaving for college tomorrow, but he never asked for presents.

Tendou seems to sense his confusion and places a hand on his arm.  “We didn’t feel like we had to do this,” he says quietly.  “It’s something we wanted to do.”

That helps.  Wakatoshi still doesn’t quite understand, but that helps.  He unwraps the towel, revealing a drawing mounted on a piece of thick cardstock.  The drawing depicts an old lot stuck between an abandoned apartment building and what was once a restaurant, with cracking pavement, invading vines, and a lightless lamp post in the middle.  Several clotheslines are strung up between the lamp post and one of the windows of the building.  It’s the middle of the day, in the picture – the sky is a bright, brilliant blue.

“Tendou did the drawing,” Oohira says.

Wakatoshi turns to Tendou, trying to convey the awe he feels without words.  Tendou shrugs, the tips of his ears flushing faintly red.  “I used to practice drawing a lot.  It wasn’t hard.  But – turn it over, that’s the important part.”

Wakatoshi flips the drawing over.  On the back are messages, from each member of the team – all _you’re the best captain we could’ve asked for_ and _you’re strong and incredible and I’ll always look up to you_ and _I’ve learned so much from you, thank you._

There’s something in Wakatoshi’s eye.  He reaches up one finger to wipe it out, and the finger comes away damp.  But not with rainwater.

“It’s so that you don’t forget us, when you’re up at that fancy professional school playing fancy professional volleyball, or when you go to the Olympics one day,” Shirabu explains.

Wakatoshi shakes his head slowly, side to side to side to side.  “I don’t understand.  I was only a captain for our official games –”

“No, you weren’t,” Yamagata interrupts him.  “You might not realize it, but you were our captain from the moment you took out that old purple ball.”

“You’re a strong ace that makes everyone want to be stronger,” Goshiki says.

“You never make anyone feel like they’re worthless – everyone has the chance to improve,” Semi says.

“You keep playing.  No matter what happens, you always keep playing,” Oohira says.

“You have the most incredible work ethic, and the most incredible kindness,” Kawanishi says.

“You remind people that they’re important,” Tendou says.

“You’re going to be the hardest captain to live up to,” Shirabu says.  “And I mean that in the most complimentary way,” he adds quickly, when Oohira gives him a Look.

Wakatoshi runs his fingers along the signatures, along the lines and swoops and curves.  He feels as though he’s standing on top of the world.  As though if he jumped high enough, the wind would carry him up past the trees and up into the clouds.

His new teammates at Waseda might have coaches and regimens and training, but none of them – _none of them_ – has a team like his.

“Tendou,” he says.  There’s a lump in his throat, making his voice slightly hoarse.  Strange.  “Tendou.  Don’t get too cocky.  Rely on logic as well as instinct.  Oohira.  Stop being nervous.  When you spike, put your whole body into it.  Yamagata.  You need to move faster once the ball is hit.  Don’t rely on diving to get it every time.  Semi.  You’re an excellent pinch server, but you’re also an excellent setter.  Don’t stop competing.  Kawanishi.  You shouldn’t listen to Tendou, but sometimes you could afford to think less about timing and just jump.  Shirabu.  Keep your temper in check.  Go for long distance runs.  You’ll be a great captain.  And Goshiki …”

Wakatoshi can see the kid practically vibrating, his mind probably running through a thousand different mistakes he’s made during a thousand different practices.

“… I’m counting on you.”

Goshiki practically jumps a foot in the air.  His bangs float for a second, probably trying to save themselves the embarrassment of being attached to his head any longer.  “Counting on me!” he exclaims.  “ _Counting_ on me!  Counting on _me_!  Did you hear that!  Did you!”

“Yeah, we were there,” Semi says.  But he’s grinning.  Everyone is grinning.  Wakatoshi is so incredibly proud of all of them – he wishes he knew how to say it, but he thinks he doesn’t have to.

The forest is quiet.  There are no planes, and only a few birds, braving the fog lingering after the storm.  But Wakatoshi’s friends drown out the silence - Goshiki is muttering to Shirabu, and Yamagata whispers something to Oohira, who laughs and tells it to Semi.  They all look at home here on top of the mountain, gleaming in the emerging sun.  Wakatoshi wonders if they could stay here until the sun sets.

And then Kawanishi asks, “So, _now_ can we go back?”

“No!” Goshiki yelps.  He points up at the oak tree where the purple ball is still stuck, somehow not at all dislodged by the rain.  “We have to get it!   _I_ have to get it!”

Before anyone can discourage him, he takes a running start, leaps, and pulls himself up onto the tree.

“Goshiki, you really don’t need to do that,” Shirabu says.

“Goshiki, that’s dangerous!  The tree is going to be slippery from the rain!” Oohira shouts.

“USHIJIMA’S COUNTING ON ME!” Goshiki yells back.

And there’s little they can do but watch as the youngest member of their team scales a giant oak tree to retrieve an old purple plastic ball.  He scales it easily, practically jumping from branch to branch – and something about his movements is familiar.  Something about this _tree_ is familiar.

Wakatoshi stares up at the tree.

It’s familiar, in a way he can’t quite describe – the arrangement of branches, or the shapes of leaves, or the number of limbs, or perhaps something less tangible and more important.  He remembers a father standing at the bottom and telling him he’s the best tree-climber in all of Japan.  He remembers watching the sunrise over an empty city.

He knows this tree.  And he knows the view Goshiki will see when he reaches the top.  Except that the view now must be different than it was then – the city has been rebuilt from ashes, factories rising where there used to be fields and schools rising where there used to be factories and a gym for volleyball rising because a team of eight boys beat impossible odds.  Tokyo of today is a different city from Tokyo of four years ago.  Wakatoshi can only imagine what four years from now Tokyo might look like.

Goshiki reaches the top and stands on one of the sturdier branches.  As he grabs the ball and tosses it down, the mist begins to clear.

“I can see the whole city from here!” he shouts.  “It looks so bright!  It’s incredible!”

The world is turning, the world is turning, the world is new.

 

 

> _August 15, 1960_
> 
> _Dear Mr. Editor,_
> 
> _You have asked me to write to you defending my submission of a manuscript detailing my experience with my high school volleyball team.  While I had hoped that you would take a chance with my work on its own merit, I am happy to provide an explanation for the reason why I wrote this book, and why I believe you should publish it._
> 
> _You wrote that you do not understand why volleyball should be the subject of a novel, especially not a high school team similar to teams around the nation and around the world.  Sir, my team was different from any other team.  Our team was entirely self-motivated and self-taught.  We had no coach, no equipment save what we bought ourselves, and no practice space save what we fought hard to use.  And yet despite these handicaps, we still won a national championship tournament._
> 
> _Our story is one of overcoming external hardship.  But it is also about overcoming internal hardship.  All of my friends and teammates had lost a parent (some both parents) to the war, and our team and our game helped us to overcome those losses and find strength in each other.  We went from a team of misfits and loners to a team of close friends and town heroes._
> 
> _You wouldn’t think of volleyball as an art form, but it is.  It’s like comic book superheroes – it gives people hope.  You will read about kids working hard, honing their skills, learning to work together as a team, dedicating themselves to a family like the ones they all lost.  You could call my friends living propaganda – but we are something greater.  We are inspiration to others who see us, standing tall and fighting with the color of the rising sun on our chests._
> 
> _This is the story of a group of lost boys finding home in each other.  This is the story of a forest flourishing up from ashes spewn by an angry volcano.  This is the story of boys who believe themselves gods – not powerful gods, not vindictive gods, but gods of protection, of spirit, of bounty.  These heroes do not fight with guns or swords, but with the palms of their hands, the sweat of their brows, the burn of their muscles.  They fight with love for each other, for their team, for the nation Japan is becoming.  They fight with love._
> 
> _This could be the story of a new kind of army, but it isn’t.  This is the story of learning to live in peace when all you know is war.  This is the story of looking at the world, seeing no place in it for you, and building one yourself._
> 
> _This is the story of Shiratorizawa._
> 
> _Mr. Editor, I apologize for being forward and over-enthusiastic – these are traits my friends have told me I possess in excess – but I hope you can understand now why I believe this is an important story for me to tell and for our nation to read.  I believe that, in this time of turmoil, I can help remind people of a time when we learned to stand together and of the great things that people can accomplish when they combine their strengths._
> 
> _Sincerely,_
> 
> _Goshiki Tsutomu_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a fic like this really takes a village. and i have many people to thank:  
> \- [patrick](https://twitter.com/bear_socialist), my so, who listened to me rant about the fic in all stages of planning, helped me with historical accuracy, and is constantly teaching me how to write love.  
> \- [megan](https://twitter.com/ohirareon), the best cheerleader/proofreader/general encouragement giver i could ever ask for. she's supported literally every part of this fic, from when i first told her about the idea to posting this act for me while i'm at a football game. when i was finishing act one, i asked her for a pep talk, completely out of the blue, and she gave me such a good pep talk, i saved it on my computer to look at when i'm feeling sad. she's very important to me and this fic.  
> \- [nat](https://twitter.com/natroze), who has been the guide of this fic's historical accuracy and cultural accuracy. they've answered questions about everything from attitudes towards the war in post-wwii japan to whether or not japan has any native species of duck. they're wonderful and incredibly knowledgeable.  
> \- [puck](https://twitter.com/goodfellowes), [amber](https://twitter.com/ambyguity_), and everyone in the shiratorizawa gc who's been supportive and enthusiastic during my writing of this fic.  
> \- [kat](http://tendouaf.tumblr.com/), who did such beautiful art and has given me such lovely comments. i'm so glad we got to work together on this fic, and i hope we can work together more in the future.  
> \- everyone who has commented, bookmarked, talked to me on twitter, or just read and enjoyed acts one and two. y'all are what keeps me writing.  
> \- all my irl friends and relatives who've listened to me ramble about this fic despite having no idea what i'm talking about.  
> \- last (but certainly not least) [becky](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis). my beta. my friend. the person who knows my writing better than anyone. this fic would be an incoherent mess without her. and i love her, even though she's a menace who suggested i change every single date on this fic to april 20th.
> 
> please, _please_ talk to me about this fic. on [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor), [tumblr](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/), in comments, wherever. this is the most difficult thing i've ever written, and is probably the piece of writing i'm most proud of. suffice it to say: if you've ever wanted to do serious literary analysis on a fic, this is your chance. ♥
> 
> UPDATE, 1/27/17: linking to more beautiful art! megan drew [goshiki climbing the tree](https://ohirareon.tumblr.com/post/156376145709/a-doodle-for-owlinaminors-birthday-from-act-3-of) from the end of act three, and aj drew [this incredible piece](http://thehauntedboy.tumblr.com/post/156409941781) that really captures the tone and symbolism in act one.


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